Emerging Form

Wow, it’s been a minute! Today’s episode is number 100, and we use the occasion to reflect on the origins of Emerging Form and how it has evolved since February 21, 2019 when we released episode 1. (We have been releasing bonus episodes every other week since episode 10, which means that this is actually episode 190!!)We also discuss what we’ve learned how doing the podcast has enriched our lives and our friendship.Episodes mentioned:Ep 2: Is talent necessary with Jenn KahnEp 76 Bonus Chris Duffy on Differentiating Between You and Your IdeasEp 28 The daily grind with Holiday MathisEp 9: how should we think of awards and contests (live show!) Ep 82 Bonus: Creative Pleasures with Brad Aaron Modlin Ep 57: How play can fuel creativity with Catherine Price  (and #45 protecting your creative time)Ep 88: Emily Scott on the art of performingEp 19: Creativity and COVID-19 with Peter HellerEp 79: Lauren Fleshman on Telling Her Story to Create Social ChangeEp 40: Envy, with Cheryl Strayed Ep 74: T.A. Barron on the Magic of StoriesEp 93: Melissa L. SevignyEp 77 Bonus: Aaron Abeyta ep. 77 bonus   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 guidance does the earth offer for creative practice? We speak with Jacqeline Suskin, author of A Year in Practice: Seasonal Rituals and Prompts to Awaken Cycles of Creative Expression about how to rest, when to push, when to engage in reflection, when to seek inspiration. We explore the rhythms of the earth and of creativity, specifically focusing on autumn and how this season might inform your creative practice. Jacqueline Suskin has composed over forty thousand poems with her ongoing improvisational writing project, Poem Store. She is the author of six books, including Help in the Dark Season. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and Yes! magazine. She lives in Detroit. For more, see jacquelinesuskin.com.https://www.jacquelinesuskin.com/**Vanessa Zoltan explains why she believes “writing a bad novel is an amazing sacred practice” in this Slate article Christie and Rosemerry discuss: Don’t Just Write a Novel This November. Write a Bad Novel. It’s good for you! 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

We’ve got a quick announcement. You probably noticed that we didn’t put out a new episode today. That's not because it’s Rosemerry’s birthday, though it is! Happy birthday Rosemerry! Nope, we are taking a short break, this week and next, to get ready for some great stuff ahead. We are one episode away from our 100th episode, which is actually more like our 180th episode, because most episodes have a bonus to go along with it.We are going to be going over some of our favorite moments from the podcast so far. In the meantime, Rosemerry and I are going to re-listen to ep 12, about saying no. We’ll be back on Nov 16. Catch you then! 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

As a culture, we spend a lot of our time watching tv and movies and reading and popular fiction, but we rarely stop to reflect on the influence these forms of entertainment have on our lives. In his new book, You Are What You Watch, data journalist Walt Hickey takes deep, fun, rambunctious dive into all the ways that movies, television, and other forms of pop culture are fundamentally important to how we experience the world, how we see ourselves and the kind of the values that we embrace. He explains how Jurassic Park inspired him to study math in college and got people interested in paleontology while also increasing funding for the field. He graphs how movies drive tourism and influence what kind of dogs people want. Best of all, the book contains an entire chapter exploring what stories do to their creators. Turns out, writing fan fiction puts a rocket on someone’s ability to write. Walt Hickey is the Deputy Editor for Data and Analysis at Insider News. He  works on cool stories and supports the newsroom through data journalism. In 2022, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Illustrated Reporting. In Spring of 2018, he launched his creator-owned daily morning newsletter Numlock News. It’s all about the cool numbers buried in the news. It’s funny and makes you smarter. He also predicts the Oscars in the Numlock Awards Supplement, a seasonal pop-up spinoff of Numlock. He’s the author of the new book You Are What You Watch: How Movies and TV Affect Everyting. 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 could embracing change help grow and develop your creative practice? We speak with best-selling author Brad Stulberg about “rugged flexibility” and new definitions for stability, how your expectations might be inhibiting your creativity, how the way you define yourself limits or grows your creative potential, and much more. We also discuss why it sometimes sucks to succeed. Brad Stulberg is the bestselling author of Master of Change and The Practice of Groundedness. He writes for The New York Times and is on faculty at the University of Michigan's Graduate School of Public Health. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Western North Carolina.Christie’s TEDx talk about envy and how someone else wrote her book.Episode 73: Steve Magness on Doing Hard Things 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 science, spirituality and poetry weave together? We speak with heralded poet David Keplinger about his newest poetry collection, Ice, which he playfully describes as “poetry via the Pleistocene.” The book, and our conversation, explores emergence–the emergence of Ice Age animals once preserved in ice and the emergence of feelings and old versions of the self as the heart melts with age and self-compassion. We talk about how creative practice can help us move from “stuckness to spontaneity” and how it is creativity helps us “remember we are here.”David Keplinger is the director of the MFA Program at American University, recipient of two NEA fellowships, the Colorado Book Award, the TS Eliot Award (selected by Mary Oliver), the Cavafy Prize (selected by Ilya Kaminsky), the Rilke Prize, and the Emily Dickinson Award from the Poetry Society of America. He’s a longtime translator of Büchner Preis winning German poet Jan Wagner. His new poetry book is called Ice, which combines a concern for climate change with a metaphor for inner light. 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

Versatility in writing across genres can be a great blessing for a writer, and in this episode we speak with Cameron Walker who works as a journalist, writes poetry and fiction, and has two books coming out this year—one, a book of essays, and the other is an illustrated book for kids about US National Monuments. We speak about how to push yourself in different genres, the importance of trust in your process, how gratefulness became an important part of her writing practice, and the challenges of telling a complicated story in a way simple enough for kids to comprehend without sacrificing the truth of the complexities.Cameron Walker is a writer based in California. Her journalism, essays, and fiction have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Hakai, The Missouri Review, and The Last Word on Nothing. She’s won awards for her writing from the American Society of Journalists and Authors, the American Institute of Physics, and Terrain.org. She is the author of National Monuments of the U.S.A., a book for kids beautifully illustrated by Chris Turnham. Her essay collection, Points of Light, is coming out this fall from Hidden River Press.Links:Cameron’s website: www.cameronwalker.netCameron’s Last Word On Nothing archive: https://www.lastwordonnothing.com/category/cameron/Cameron’s beautiful book, National Monuments of the USA (with illustrations by Chris Turnham) https://www.quarto.com/books/9780711265493/national-monuments-of-the-usa 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

This episode is all about passion. What happens when a curiosity takes on a life of its own? How do you juggle a passion project with a full-time job? What are the benefits to working alone? How do you determine a project has chops? We speak with Christine Laskowski, who recently launched an independent passion project, T&J, a podcast devoted to 6th century Byzantium and the greatest recorded love story on earth, between Empress Theodora and her husband, the Emperor Justinian.Laskowski is a Berlin-based, multimedia journalist with 15 years of reporting, music and storytelling experience from around the world. Her video and audio work has appeared on CBS News, NPR, FiveThirtyEight, and Vox/Netflix. Two years ago, she pitched and then supervised the first TikTok news account for the German broadcaster, Deutsche Welle. http://christinelaskowski.com/Christine_Laskowski/Home.htmlvimeo.com/christinelaskowski @laskowski_chttps://tandj.buzzsprout.com/ 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

Creative projects have a habit of taking on their own lives and bringing the creator along for the ride. In this episode, we speak with science writer Melissa L. Sevigny about how her book Brave the Wild River: The untold story of two women who mapped the botany of the Grand Canyon surprised her and required her to tell a story different from the one she set out to write. She also shares how she managed to work a full-time job while researching and writing, how she created three-dimensional characters out of archival information and interviews, how the book let her know she was done, and what she learned from this project to apply to future projects.   Melissa L. Sevigny grew up in Tucson, Arizona, where she fell in love with the Sonoran Desert’s ecology and dark desert skies. She has worked as a science communicator in the fields of space exploration, water policy, and sustainable agriculture, and has a B.S. in environmental science from the University of Arizona and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Iowa State University.She is the science reporter at KNAU (Arizona Public Radio) in Flagstaff, Arizona and her stories have been awarded regional Edward R. Murrow awards and featured nationally on Science Friday. In addition to Brave the Wild River, she’s also written Mythical River and Under Desert Skies.Learn more about her at www.melissasevigny.com or follow her on Twitter @melissasevigny. 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

Staying Open to Meet the Moment with Rosemerry on Breathing WindA special surprise! This week, instead of hearing Rosemerry as an interviewer, you can hear her as an interviewee, talking about the intersection of creativity and grief on Breathing Wind, a wonderful podcast that offers “warm, honest and insightful conversations for journeying introspectively through grief and loss.” Hosts Naila Francis and Sarah Davis talk with her about poetry as a practice for meeting each moment, her unfolding journey through devastating loss, how she’s been carried by an immensity of love since the death of her son Finn, in the same year that her father died, and how grief has deepened her trust in that love while inviting her, over and over again, to say yes to the world. For their show notes for this episode, visit here.  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