Emerging Form

“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

How can our creative practice extend to the way we treat other people? How might we build entire careers out of our creative dreams? These questions are at the heart of our conversation with Sherry Richert Belul. We also talk about creating a “seamless life” with no delineation between work and play and how to pay attention to (and act on) the creative ideas that “just drop in.”Sherry Richert Belul, founder of Simply Celebrate, helps people find creative, intentional, and impactful ways to celebrate life and to express love for family and friends. As a certified life coach, Sherry supports people in living their best lives, full of joy, success, engagement, and meaningful relationships. She is the author of Say it Now: 33 Creative Ways to Say I LOVE YOU to the Most Important People in Your Life, cohost of the Heart Wisdom Author Panel with Mango Publishing, and co-founder of The Secret Agents of Change kindness project. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Town + Country, and The Wall Street Journal.Say It Now: 33 Ways to Say I Love You to the Most Important People in Your Life Simply Celebrate 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

Artificial Intelligence now permeates our daily lives. What conversations are we not having about AI? And how can creative projects help open these discussions about what is really at stake? In this episode of Emerging Form, journalist Evan Ratliff shares with us how he cloned his voice, connected it to a chat bot, and created a voice agent that took calls and made calls–both to strangers and friends–all in a voice that sounded as if it were him. He shares the project, his questions, his concerns, his discoveries on a new podcast, Shell Game. We speak with him about the genesis of the show, how having no prescriptive ideas on the outset can benefit creative practice, how financing your own creative project offers more creative freedom, and why it was so important in a program about AI to have all the content created by humansEvan Ratliff is an award-winning investigative journalist, bestselling author, podcast host, and entrepreneur. He’s the author of the The Mastermind: A True Story of Murder, Empire, and a New Kind of Crime Lord; the writer and host of the hit podcasts Shell Game and Persona: The French Deception; and the cofounder of The Atavist Magazine, Pop-Up Magazine, and the Longform Podcast.Links:Shell GameEvan interviewing Christie on the Longform Podcast 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 does storytelling matter? Why might we bring in feelings about our children or a moment of being overcome with beauty into a book about, say, climate change? In this episode of Emerging Form, we speak with Auden Schendler about the power of story, about how we are drawn to tell the stories we most need to tell, and how and why it’s important to let humility be a part of our practice.Auden Schendler has spent almost thirty years working on sustainability and climate change in the corporate world, focusing on big scale change that rejects tokenism. Currently Senior Vice President of Sustainability at Aspen One, he has been a town councilman, a Colorado Air Quality Control Commissioner, and an ambulance medic. He’s the author of Getting Green Done: Hard Truths from the Sustainability Revolution, which climatologist James Hansen called “an antidote to greenwash,” and new this year, Terrible Beauty: Reckoning with Climate Complicity and Rediscovering our Soul, which historian Naomi Oreskes called “compelling and weirdly fun.” 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

There’s an art to deep listening and eliciting enlivening conversation, and in this episode we speak with celebrated interviewer Mitzi Rapkin, founder, host and producer of the literary podcast “First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing.” Join us in an exploration of how to draw out authenticity and invite conversations “with a life force of their own” that allow you to “go to a place you never thought you could go.”Mitzi Rapkin is the founder, host and producer of the literary podcast, “First Draft: A Dialogue on Writing,” which features a new author interview each week. There, she has interviewed more than 500 contemporary writers over the past eleven years, exploring the decisions and psychology that went into the writing of featured books, writers’ themes and the human experience. Rapkin is also a journalist, fiction writer, certified integral coach, facilitator and fiction-writing instructor. Her company, Full Light Communications, helps clients articulate and achieve their vision through facilitation, coaching, and communications services. She is never far from a bar of dark chocolate. 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

“If you are sitting around waiting to be inspired, you won’t get a lot of painting done,” says mixed-media artist Kellie Day. In this episode, we talk about finding inspiration, a practice of showing up, the difference between creating from the head vs. creating from the spirit, how “shadow careers” can be an attempt to get closer to our passion, the miracles that can come from mistakes, and working through self-judgment, and how to “open to greater creativity.”Kellie Day is mixed-media artist whose paintings hold serendipitous treasures including Sufi poems, stenciled spray paint, handmade stamps and bold drips of acrylic paint applied with a paint syringe, creating rich textured layers of collage and acrylics. This unconventional approach has caught the eye of major brands like Trader Joe's, The North Face, and Alpinist Magazine who have featured her work in their collections. She’s also worked as a US Forest Service Ranger, firefighter, and graphic designer, and brings both structure and great freedom to her role as an International Art Mentor, helping women discover their artistic voices and explore their own creativity. 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

It’s our annual end of the year episode, in which we review the year that was and assess how things went. We share our revelations and highlights and what we hope to do better in the coming year. We also pick new words for 2025 to help guide our process and look back on our words for 2024 and how they served us.And we have news! Starting this month, Emerging Form is also a radio show on KVNF radio. You can hear us every other Tuesday from 6:30pm to 7pm mountain time.Christie’s essay about living with uncertainty. The Scientific American feature story Christie wrote about metabolically healthy obesity. Uncertain, Christie’s limited run podcast series released by Scientific American. The Unfolding, Rosemerry’s latest book of poetry. 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 does the writing practice help us know what we most want to say? How do we translate an intimate, interactive personal style into a practical, how-to book? In this episode of Emerging Form, we interview Rebecca Mullen who has spent decades as a marriage counselor and recently translated her experience onto the page. “My process as coach is as question asker,” she says. “When you are writing a book, it’s not a conversation, it is one way. It’s still important to me to be the coach pausing to ask questions, inviting readers to try this on. I wanted the book to have an interactive style and conversational tone.” We speak about how to organize your ideas, how to grow into an authoritative voice, how to get clear, and how writing a how-to book about marriage can profoundly affect your marriage.Rebecca Mullen is an artist, writer, and coach. She hosts the podcast Habits for Your Happily Ever After, and her TEDx Talk invites you to create peace at the dinner table with the stories you tell. Her brand-new book is called 6 Steps to Better Marriage Communication.Rosemerry on Rebecca’s podcast: How Does the Death of. Child Impact Your Marriage Christie on Rebecca’s podcast: How Science Can Help Your Marriage Communication 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