Emerging Form

“You have to have a lot of patience,” says science writer Jennie Erin Smith about working on a long-term creative project. She adds, “You have to have a lot of patience with eccentric people.” In this bonus episode, we talk about patience, plus about sharing work with creative heroes, the importance of taking a good long break, the art of pushing through, what to do when the words aren’t coming, and why having a “breakthrough” isn’t a necessary part of the process.Jennie Erin Smith is the author of Valley of Forgetting: Alzheimer's Families and the Search for a Cure. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, and others. She is a recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award; the Waldo Proffitt Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism in Florida; and two first-place awards from the Society for Features Journalism. She lives in Florida and Colombia. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

When a creative project lasts for many years, how do you create a cohesive story? How do you gather and organize that much research? At what point do you begin writing? How do you handle the changing of an editor? What happens when you don’t know the ending? And what if you hoped for a different ending? We cover all these questions with Jennie Erin Smith, author of Valley of Forgetting, a book ten years in the making, about a vast Columbian family and the Alzheimer’s researchers who studied them.Jennie Erin Smith is the author of Valley of Forgetting: Alzheimer's Families and the Search for a Cure. She is a regular contributor to The New York Times and has written for The Wall Street Journal, The Times Literary Supplement, The New Yorker, and others. She is a recipient of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award; the Waldo Proffitt Award for Excellence in Environmental Journalism in Florida; and two first-place awards from the Society for Features Journalism. She lives in Florida and Colombia. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How can looking at the past help us understand what to do about a current crisis? “I’m a firm believer that history can help give us perspective here,” says science writer Lisa S. Gardiner. She’s speaking about her research with coral reefs, but it’s an apropos metaphor for how our past experiences with creative endeavors can help inform our current struggles. In this episode, we talk about the importance of the book proposal (and tips for getting one done), the art of weaving the self into a story that’s not memoir, and how essential our curiosity is to, well, everything.Lisa S. Gardiner is a freelance writer, geoscientist, and educator. She is the author of Reefs of Time: What Fossils Reveal about Coral Survival and Tales from an Uncertain World: What Other Assorted Disasters Can Teach Us About Climate Change. Her writing has appeared in Nautilus Magazine, Scientific American, bioGraphic, and Audubon, among other places. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

What happens when the subject of your creative practice scares you? Not only that, but what if you’re scared, too, of what might happen when you put your work into the world? We speak with physicist and author Adam Becker about his new book, More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity, in which he writes about the terrible plans tech billionaires have for the future and why they won’t work. Our conversation includes why doubt is a strength, being a planner vs. a pantser, why bringing your body into your practice is important, and why Adam spends time with trees.Adam Becker is a science journalist with a PhD in physics. He is the author, most recently, of More Everything Forever: AI Overlords, Space Empires, and Silicon Valley's Crusade to Control the Fate of Humanity. In addition to his books, he has written for the New York Times, the BBC, NPR, Scientific American, New Scientist, Quanta, and many other publications. He lives in California.Adam’s first book, What Is Real? Find Adam on Bluesky This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Knowing your audience is everything for a storyteller, and sometimes that information comes in real time. “Within three minutes I am going to know if this is going to be terrible for all of us or great,” says storyteller Bil Lepp. In this bonus episode, we talk about how to respond on stage to an audience’s laughter, what to do if you find yourself with an audience of middle schoolers, how to handle a show that doesn’t go so well, and how he got started in storytelling.Bil Lepp is an award-winning storyteller, author, and recording artist. He’s the host of the History Channel’s Man Vs History series, the occasional host of NPR’s internationally syndicated Mountain Stage. Though a five time champion of the WV Liars’s Contest, Lepp’s stories often contain morsels of truth that present universal themes in clever and witty ways. Bil’s books and audio collections have won the PEN Steven Kroll Award for Children’s Book Writing, Parents’ Choice Gold Awards and awards from the National Parenting Publications Association. He’s also the recipient of the Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folk honor. The Charleston Gazette calls him a “cross between Dr. Seuss and film noir.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

Humor for the joy of it is reason enough, but in this episode we speak with storyteller Bil Lepp about how humor might also be a way to earn trust with an audience so that we might bring in difficult conversations. He offers techniques for how to craft toward a punchline and how to use a “Lego” approach to crafting multiple stories. We also touch on how storytelling builds community.Bil Lepp is an award-winning storyteller, author, and recording artist. He’s the host of the History Channel’s Man Vs History series, the occasional host of NPR’s internationally syndicated Mountain Stage. Though a five time champion of the WV Liars’s Contest, Lepp’s stories often contain morsels of truth that present universal themes in clever and witty ways. Bil’s books and audio collections have won the PEN Steven Kroll Award for Children’s Book Writing, Parents’ Choice Gold Awards and awards from the National Parenting Publications Association. He’s also the recipient of the Vandalia Award, West Virginia’s highest folk honor. The Charleston Gazette calls him a “cross between Dr. Seuss and film noir.” This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

“Practice teaches us to have faith in the process,” says Andrea Barrett, National Book Award winning author. In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with her about her newest book, Dust and Light: On the Art of Fact in Fiction. It’s one of the most metaphor-rich, process-curious shows we’ve had yet. We explore the joys of rabbit holes, the importance of not knowing what we are looking for, the inevitability of false starts (and how to let go of the work we’ve done), why we shouldn’t worry about writing unreadable first drafts, how to develop the muscle of intuition, and the questionable wisdom of how we teach creative writing.Andrea Barrett is the author of the National Book Award-winning Ship Fever, Voyage of the Narwhal, Servants of the Map, Natural History, and other works of fiction. She has received a MacArthur Fellowship, a Guggenheim Award, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an NEA Fellowship, and the Rea Award for the Short Story, and been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She lives in the Adirondacks. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

“I turn to the poem, I turn to the page for a sense of hope, how to move through life, how to get through a day,” says Danusha Laméris. “I have come to a place where I trust the poem more than I trust myself.” In our second conversation with the award-winning poet, (We also interviewed her in Episode 29 on “the understory”), she shares from her newest collection, Blade by Blade, and we talk about how a writing practice grows us, how it allows us to “salvage time,” and how it helps us see how connected we other with the past and with others.Danusha Laméris’ first book, The Moons of August (2014), was chosen by Naomi Shihab Nye as the winner of the Autumn House Press Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Milt Kessler Book Award. A Pushcart Prize recipient, some of her work has been published in: The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Orion, The American Poetry Review, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and Prairie Schooner. Her second book, Bonfire Opera, (University of Pittsburgh Press, Pitt Poetry Series), was a finalist for the 2021 Paterson Poetry Award and the winner of the Northern California Book Award in Poetry. She was selected for the Lucille Clifton Legacy Award, and was the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of Santa Cruz County, California. She is on the faculty of Pacific University’s Low Residency MFA program. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

“Doing this book took me out of my comfort zone, into new fields I wasn’t comfortable with,” says Alex Hutchinson, speaking of his newest book The Explorer's Gene: Why We Seek Big Challenges, New Flavors, and the Blank Spots on the Map. And so it is we speak with the expert on exploration about his own experiences of exploring in creative practice. Why are we drawn to what we don’t know? How do we know when enough is enough? When is it better to build on what we know than launch into new territory? And what of that revelation that seems to stay just beyond our grasp?Alex Hutchinson is the New York Times bestselling author of Endure, a longtime columnist for Outside covering the science of endurance, and a National Magazine Award–winning journalist who has contributed to the New York Times, The New Yorker, and other publications. A former long-distance runner for the Canadian national team, he holds a master’s in journalism from Columbia and a Ph.D. in physics from Cambridge, and he did his post-doctoral research with the National Security Agency. He lives in Toronto with his family. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe

How do the stories we tell become intricately involved with our identities? And how do we change the stories that are not serving us? In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with storyteller Kristin Pedemonti, founder of Steer Your Story, about Narrative Therapy Practices. We discuss unpeeling layers of stories, how to “thicken the threads” of a preferred narrative, the importance of play, and meeting “stuckness.”Founder of Steer Your Story, Kristin Pedemonti believes in the power of story to connect and heal. Recipient of the National Storytelling Network International Story Bridge Award, she’s presented in 20 countries across five continents. Kristin serves as Storytelling Consultant and Coach for UNICEF Ghana and for the World Bank coaching staff to mine data to tell the human story. In 2005, Kristin sold her home and possessions to create and facilitate Literacy Outreach Belize. She donated storytelling and writing programs for 30,000 students and trained 800 teachers how to utilize their indigenous legends to teach creative writing. Her book: A Bridge of Stories chronicles this seven-year literacy project.You can also find her on: Instagram @kristinpedemontiFacebook: Kristin Pedemonti, Linked In Kristin Pedemonti This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit emergingform.substack.com/subscribe