Emerging Form

Writing a memoir is so much more than writing down memories–it’s shedding layers of stories we’ve told ourselves for years, seeing ourselves in unflattering lights, opening up to compassion, and exposing our underbelly. And it’s powerful medicine. In this episode, we talk with Laura Davis about the story behind her memoir, The Burning Light of Two Stars: A Mother-Daughter Story. In her blunt, brave way, Davis tells the complicated story of how deep wounds exposed an even deeper love–and what it took to get to that place.Laura Davis is also the author of The Courage to Heal, and four other groundbreaking books. In addition to writing books that inspire, the work of Laura’s heart is to teach. For more than twenty years, she’s helped people find their voices, tell their stories, and hone their craft. Laura has been published in Publisher's Weekly, Writer's Digest, CrimeReads, Brevity, and The New York Times, featured in Los Angeles Review of Books, and on QWERTY, Write-Minded, The Only One in the Room, and dozens of other podcasts. She's a featured speaker for The National Association of Memoir Writers and a popular craft teacher at The San Miguel Writer's Conference. Laura is teaching a special series of online summer pop-up classes this summer and will be leading her signature Writing as a Pathway Through Grief retreat in August. Next spring, she’ll be taking a group to Bali for an in-depth dive into Balinese spirituality and healing practices. You can learn about Laura’s retreats, workshops, and classes, and read the first five chapters of her memoir at www.lauradavis.net.  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

For Phyllis Cole-Dai, mindfulness is “keeping my head and my heart where my body is … here and now.” In this interview with the poet, writer, community leader, and editor of the popular Poetry of Presence anthologies, we explore the role of mindfulness in a writing practice and how mindfulness helps our writing be in service to a larger community. How can our creative practice help further social justice? How can our creative practice honor “what is beautiful in every person, even the ones we have most strong disagreement with?” And how is joy an integral part of any practice, especially in a time of social upheaval? Phyllis Cole-Dai began pecking away on an old manual typewriter in childhood and never stopped. She has authored or edited books in multiple genres, “writing across what divides us.” Originally from Ohio, she now resides with her scientist-husband and two cats in a 130-year-old house in Brookings, South Dakota. She invites you to join The Raft, her online community on Substack, where members ride the river of life, buoyed by the arts and spiritual practice (phylliscoledai.substack.com).website: https://phylliscoledai.comOnline community (The Raft): phylliscoledai.substack.comPoetry of Presence (both volumes): https://poetryofpresencebook.comExploring Poetry of Presence II: Prompts to Deepen Your Writing Practice 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 to our writing when we begin with an I-don’t-know mindset? Our work becomes more loose, more fresh, more playful, more true. We speak with authors and teachers James Navé and Allegra Huston about their book Write What You Don’t Know: 10 Steps to Writing with Confidence, Energy, and Flow. It’s a practical and fun episode with many tips for escaping the rational mind and allowing your imagination to take the lead. Allegra Huston and James Navé are co-founders of Imaginative Storm Writing Workshops and the publishing company Twice 5 Miles. They have been teaching multi-day and single-day writing workshops together and separately for over 20 years. For five years they taught a creativity retreat for screenwriting students at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and both have also taught for the University of Oklahoma OSLEP program. jamesnave.comimaginativestorm.com Instagram: @imaginativestorm allegrahuston.com Facebook: Imaginative StormLinkedIn: Imaginative Storm Youtube: youtube.com/@imaginativestorm  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 is affecting creative industries–for instance Hollywood screenwriters–and frustrating creative writing instructors with papers turned in composed by ChatGPT. How dangers is AI to creative careers? Can it be helpful? How do we move forward in a world where human creativity and technology work together? What is the creative’s role in building a bridge between AI and the rest of the community? Is AI creative? Should we be scared? Our conversation with poet and engineer Uche Ogbuji gives context for the AI explosion and offers long term perspective. Uche Ogbuji, more fully Úchèńnà Ogbújí, is a poet, spoken word performer, composer and DJ. His chapbook, Ndewo, Colorado  (Aldrich Press, USA, 2013), won a Colorado Book Award and a Westword Award winner (“Best Environmental Poetry”). Uche's work fuses Igbo culture, European classicism, American Mountain West setting, Hip-Hop and afrofuturism. He is a 2022 Boulder County Arts Fellow for Literature and Music, and serves on the board of the Colorado Poets Center. Former stints include editor at Kin Poetry Journal and The Nervous Breakdown.Uche’s NewsletterAlan Turing 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 we share our art with the world? In this episode of Emerging Form, singer/songwriter and incredible performer Emily Scott Robinson talks about the creativity of connecting. How do we help our audience feel seen? How can “mistakes” create bonding? How do we change energy that feels “off”? How do you make the same material feel fresh for yourself time after time? It’s a practical, heart-opening episode full of laughter. With a quarter million miles under her belt and counting, North Carolina native Emily Scott Robinson travels the dusty highways of America's wild country, capturing the stories of the people she meets and expertly crafting them into songs. Robinson received critical acclaim for her debut album Traveling Mercies. Rolling Stone named it one of the “40 Best Country and Americana Albums of 2019.” In 2021, Robinson signed with Oh Boy records, the label founded by the legendary John Prine, and released her follow-up album American Siren. It made numerous “Best of 2021” lists including NPR, Rolling Stone, American Songwriter, and No Depression. In 2022, Robinson released a collaboration for theater called Built on Bones, a song cycle written for the Witches of Shakespeare's Macbeth, featuring artists Alisa Amador and Violet Bell.Emily Scott Robinson WebsiteEmily’s Instagram Emily’s musicBuilt on Bones 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 business skills are most helpful for a creative career? And if you didn’t get a business degree, how might you best get these skills? Who might you rely on? How can you find play and creativity in the business side of your artistic dreams? We speak about this and more with fine art photographer Marisa S. White, co-founder of the True North Art Gallery.Marisa S. White is an award-winning artist best known for seamlessly stitching multiple photographs together, weaving personal narratives through surreal and fantastical imagery. Originally a drawing and painting major, Marisa fell in love with photography in college and eventually began incorporating it into her work, creating mixed media collages.Marisa’s work is collected internationally, and she has exhibited across the US and in Europe; most notably at the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California. She recently opened True North Art Gallery in Colorado Springs with two other artists. Marisa S. White website 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 Laura Tohe went to school in the Navajo Nation, there were no books by Native writers for her to read. “That was an invisibility I grew up with,” she says. She knew she wanted to be a writer, she just didn’t know how. In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with Tohe about how she found support from writers such as Joy Harjo, Simon Ortiz and Rudofo Anaya who encouraged her to write about what she knew. Now as Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, she encourages younger Navajo writers to share their stories and poems. Laura Tohe is Diné and the current Navajo Nation Poet Laureate.  She is Sleepy Rock People clan and born for the Bitter Water People clan.  She published 3 books of poetry, an anthology of Native women’s writing, and an oral history on the Navajo Code Talkers.  Her librettos, Enemy Slayer, A Navajo Oratorio (2008) and Nahasdzáán in the Glittering World (2021), performed in Arizona and France, respectively.  Among her awards are the 2020 Academy of American Poetry Fellowship, the 2019 American Indian Festival of Writers Award, and twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize.  She is Professor Emerita with Distinction from Arizona State University. In 2015 Laura was honored as the Navajo Nation Poet Laureate for 2015-2017, a title given to her in celebration and recognition of her work as a poet and writer.Laura ToheTseyí Deep in the RockNo Parole Today 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 you create a project that at the same time reaches toward grief and toward joy? What does it ask of our creative practice? What does it take, practically speaking, to make it feel cohesive? In this special episode of Emerging Form, the co-hosts talk about Rosemerry’s new book, All the Honey, which releases April 18 from Samara Press. They talk about how to select poems for a collection and how to order them. They talk about the somewhat mysterious arrival of the title and how some of the poems were written, including a romp of a poem about a time when our audio engineer Leah asked Rosemerry to make a laugh track after an audio mishap. It’s a tender and funny episode about completing a book that touches on devastation and elation and all points in between. “At first I didn’t think both kinds of poems could inhabit the same pages,” Rosemerry says, “and then I realized, ‘Of course, they can. Because that is what we as humans are asked to do—to inhabit worlds of great joy and great despair at the same time.’”“All the Honey is an outpouring of love from a poet who understands: the world that breaks our heart is the same world that knits it together.” —Phyllis Cole-Dai, co-editor, Poetry of Presence: An Anthology of Mindfulness PoemsAll the HoneyRosemerry Wahtola TrommerBook Launch on April 18“I need a chair that will make me not want want to get up and do whatever important thing I think I must do. Why is it so hard to just sit?” —Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer 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

Instead of sweating the small stuff, what if we honor the small stuff–with curiosity, with wonder. In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk with podcaster and video editor Flora Lichtman about her work as host for the listener call-in podcast “Every Little Thing,” which was essentially an “exercise in curiosity.” We discuss who can best tell a story? How do we most courageously and interestingly get from point A to point F? How do you build stakes? How does collaboration help? And how do we know when to switch mediums to tell a story the way it wants to be told? Flora Lichtman is a host and managing editor at Spotify. Most recently, she created and hosted a listener call-in podcast called Every Little Thing. The show ran for 5 years and had more than 200 episodes. Previously, she wrote for the Netflix show, "Bill Nye Saves the World,” and co-directed the Emmy-nominated video series “Animated Life” on The New York Times Op-Docs channel. (They lost to Oprah.) Before that, she hosted The Adaptors podcast about climate change, worked as a video editor and substitute host at PRI's Science Friday and co-wrote a book on the science of annoyingness. And long, long ago, she worked for a NATO oceanographic lab in Italy. For the lab's research expeditions, she lived on a ship where apertivi were served on the top deck, hoisted there via pulley by the ship's chef.Flora Lichtman’s website: http://www.floralichtman.com/Every Little Thing 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

One of the best ways to support your creative practice? Try new things. In this episode, David Epstein, author of the New York Times #1 best seller Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, talks about why many streams of interest, novelty, and beginner’s mind are important. The conversation touches on science, music, sports, art and even parenting. Highlights: Epstein debunks the 10,000 hour rule, shares how he keeps a Book of Small Experiments, navigates Christie & Rosemerry’s ongoing argument about talent, and speaks truth about luck. David Epstein is the author of the #1 New York Times best seller Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, and of the bestseller The Sports Gene. He has master's degrees in environmental science and journalism and has been an investigative reporter for ProPublica, the host of Slate‘s popular “How To!” podcast, and a senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He lives in Washington, DC.https://davidepstein.com/david-epstein-about/David’s Substack 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