Interview, LGBTQ, Non-Fiction, Philippines, Uncategorized

Episode #133: Meredith Talusan, author of FAIREST

The Digital Sala logoThis episode is produced in collaboration with The Digital Sala, an online Filipinx literary festival which launched in April 2020. 

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Meredith Talusan is an award-winning journalist and author. She has written features, essays, and opinion pieces for many publications, including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Atlantic, VICE, Matter, Backchannel, The Nation, and the American Prospect. She has contributed to several books including the New York Times Bestselling Not That Bad: Dispatches from Rape Culture edited by Roxane Gay. Her memoir, Fairest, is forthcoming from Viking / Penguin Random House.

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Interview, Philippines, Poetry, Political, Spring

Episode #132: Marianne Chan, author of ALL HEATHENS

Marianne Chan is the author of All Heathens.  She grew up in Stuttgart, Germany, and Lansing, Michigan. Her poems have appeared in West Branch, The Journal, Poetry Northwest, Denver Quarterly, Indiana Review, Carve Magazine, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. She serves as poetry editor at Split Lip Magazine.

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Interview, Poetry, Spring

Episode #132: Michelle Lin, author of A HOUSE MADE OF WATER, and Kazumi Chin, author of HAVING A COKE WITH GODZILLA

In this special Episode #132 of The Blood-Jet Writing Hour, we interview not one but two poets who happen to be in loving partnership with each other. Take a listen to this episode where poets Kazumi Chin and Michelle Lin discuss what it is like to begin and move through literary careers together, navigating romantic and professional jealousy, and what it means to build stronger communities together.

Kazumi Chin’s first poetry collection, Having a Coke with Godzilla, was published in 2017 by Sibling Rivalry Press. Their most recent work can be found in Underblong, AAWW’s the Margins, and in AALR’s Book of Curses. They are the co-organizer and host of Kearny Street Workshop’s key reading series and currently a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at UC Davis.

Michelle Lin is a poet, community arts organizer, and author of A House Made of Water from Sibling Rivalry Press. She is a Kundiman fellow, co-organizer for Kearny Street Workshop’s reading series, and fundraising manager for RYSE Center in Richmond, California, a social justice youth center. You can follow her @sadwitheyebrows.

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Fall, Fiction, Interview

Episode #131: Erin Entrada Kelly, author of LALANI AND THE DISTANT SEA

 

New York Times–bestselling author Erin Entrada Kelly was awarded the Newbery Medal for Hello, Universe.  Her debut novel, Blackbird Fly, was a Kirkus Best Book, a School Library Journal Best Book, an ALSC Notable Book, and an Asian/Pacific American Literature Honor Book. She is also the author of The Land of Forgotten Girls, winner of the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, and You Go First, a New York Times bestseller, Spring 2018 Indie Next Pick, Kirkus Reviews Best Book, and School Library Journal Best Book.  Her book, Lalani and the Distant Sea, was released in September 2019.  She grew up in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and now lives in Delaware. http://www.erinentradakelly.com

 

 

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Poetry, Summer

Episode #130: Sara Borjas, author of Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff

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Sara Borjas is a Chicanx pocha and a Fresno poet. Her debut collection of poetry, Heart Like a Window, Mouth Like a Cliff, was published by Noemi Press in March 2019 as part of the Akrilica series.

Sara earned a B.A. in English Literature from Fresno State and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing and Writing for Performative Arts from University of California, Riverside. She is currently a lecturer in the Department of Creative Writing at UC Riverside. Her poetry can be found in The Rumpus, The Academy of American Poets Poem a Day Series, TinderBox, The Offing, Entropy, Queen Mob’s Tea House, Cultural Weekly, The Acentos Review, and Luna Luna, amongst others. She co-hosts and produces The Lovesick Poetry Podcast — a west coast poetry podcast launching in 2019, alongside IRL cousin and award-winning poet, Joseph Rios.

She is a 2017 CantoMundo Fellow, a 2016 Postgraduate Writers Conference Fellow at Vermont College of Fine Arts, and a 2013 Community of Writers Workshop at Squaw Valley Fellow. She is the recipient of the 2014 Blue Mesa Poetry Prize. She lives in Los Angeles but stays rooted in Fresno.

She digs oldiez, astrophysics, aromatics, and tiny prints is about decentering whiteness.

 

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Interview, Poetry, Spring

Episode #129: MT Vallarta, our newest TBJ co-host!

 

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MT Vallarta is a poet and Ph.D. candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, where they study feminist theory, queer theory, and Filipinx poetics. Their work is published in Nat. Brut, Rabbit Catastrophe Press, Broadly, Apogee Journal, Weird Sister, TAYO Literary Magazine, and others. They were raised and live in Los Angeles, CA.

 

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Fiction, Speculative Literature, Spring

Episode #128: Victor LaValle, writer and co-editor of A PEOPLE’S FUTURE OF THE UNITED STATES

Victor LaValle is the author of the short story collection Slapboxing with Jesus, four novels, The Ecstatic, Big Machine, The Devil in Silver, and The Changeling and two novellas, Lucretia and the Kroons and The Ballad of Black Tom. He is also the creator and writer of a comic book Victor LaValle’s DESTROYER.

He has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Whiting Writers’ Award, a United States Artists Ford Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Shirley Jackson Award, an American Book Award, and the key to Southeast Queens.

He was raised in Queens, New York. He now lives in Washington Heights with his wife and kids. He teaches at Columbia University.

He can be kind of hard to reach, but he still loves you.

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Thank you to our sponsor, Libro.FM!  Support your favorite independent bookstore and purchase your audiobooks from Libro.FM.  If you use the code WRITINGHOUR, you’ll get three audiobooks for the price of a one-month, $14.99 membership.

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Emerging Voices series, Interview, Poetry, Spring

Episode #127: Erika Ayón, poet and author of ORANGE LADY

We’re kicking off National Poetry Month a few days early with an episode with Erika Ayón!  Rachelle and Erika talk about Los Angeles, the color and fruit orange, and migration.  Tune in!

Erika Ayón emigrated from Mexico when she was five years old and grew up in South Central, Los Angeles. She attended UCLA and graduated with a B.A. in English. In 2009 she was selected as a PEN Emerging Voices Fellow. In 2014 her poem “Hibiscus Skies,” was selected as a top ten poem from the Poetry in the Windows VI project sponsored by the Arroyo Arts Collective. Erika has taught poetry to middle and high school students across Los Angeles. She was a 2016-2017 Community Literature Initiative Scholar. Her debut collection of poetry Orange Lady was published by World Stage Press in March 2018. Available at http://www.worldstagepress.org/product/orange-lady.  Erika currently resides in the San Fernando Valley where she lives with her husband and two cats.

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Fall, Poetry, Uncategorized

Episode #126: Las Peregrinas

Las Peregrinas was an idea first birthed by Yaccaira Salvatierra and co-organized with Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo. They wanted California women’s voices to be in conversation with other border states and communities as a way to share and heal. Each of the four peregrinas honors her antepasados and the border in her poetry and together they share a reverence for those who have gone before them.

Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo, a first-generation Chicana, is the author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). A former Steinbeck Fellow, Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner and Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grantee, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation and Poetry Foundation. Her work is published in Acentos Review, CALYX, crazyhorse, and American Poetry Review among others. A dramatization of her poem “Our Lady of the Water Gallons,” directed by Jesús Salvador Treviño, can be viewed at latinopia.com. She is a cofounder of Women Who Submit and a member of Macondo Writers’ Workshop.

Marisol Baca is the author of Tremor (Three Mile Harbor Press). She has been published in Narrative Northeast, Riverlit, Shadowed: An Anthology of Women Writers, Acentos Review, among other publications. Marisol won the Andres Montoya poetry scholarship prize. She received her Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University where she won the Robert Chasen poetry award for her poem, Revelato. Currently, Marisol is an English professor at Fresno City College.

Yaccaira Salvatierra’s poems have appeared in Huizache, Diálogo, Puerto del Sol, and Rattleamong others. She is a VONA alumna, the recipient of the Dorrit Sibley Award for achievement in poetry, and the 2015 winner of the Puerto del Sol Poetry Prize.  She has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and a Best of the Net.  An educator and art instructor, she lives in San José, California with her two sons.

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal was born in the Rio Grande Valley borderlands to formerly undocumented Mexican immigrants. Her work has recently appeared in the Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day feature, Buzzfeed Reader, Pinwheel, Epiphany, Southern Indiana Review, Apogee, Poor Claudia, PBS Newshour and elsewhere. She is the author of the collection Beast Meridian (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series, 2017) and is currently pursuing her doctorate in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, where she is raising her son with the help of a loyal dog.

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Poetry, Summer

Episode #125: We’re rebooting the podcast w/ new podcast producer and host, Muriel Leung!

Dear listeners,

Thank you for your patience as we’re undergoing major changes here at The Blood-Jet Writing Hour.

First, our biggest and most important piece of news: we’re incredibly happy to announce that poet and author of BONE CONFETTI, Muriel Leung, will be joining Rachelle as the new co-host and producer of the show.

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We’re so excited to have Muriel be a part of The Blood-Jet Writing Hour!

Next, the podcast will get back on a regular schedule, releasing episodes monthly.  Upcoming guest poets include: Kazumi Chin, Michelle Lin, Erika Ayón and more!

And finally, we’re launching our Patreon campaign to keep the show going and to cover costs, such as SoundCloud file hosting, website domain fees, podcasting equipment, etc.  There are tons of benefits, which include a Patron-only feed with writing and podcasting tips (this starts at just $1 a month!); signed copies of Rachelle and Muriel’s poetry collections; and manuscript consultations.  Help launch us into our 10th (!!!) year of podcasting and highlighting underrepresented writers and poets!

That’s it for now — lots of exciting episodes will be soon hitting your podcast feed — and as always you can follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram (@thebloodjet)!

All best,

The Blood-Jet Writing podcast crew

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Interview, Non-Fiction, Summer

Episode #124 – Angela Garbes, author of LIKE A MOTHER, A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy

Episode #124 – Angela Garbes, author of LIKE A MOTHER

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Angela Garbes is a Seattle-based writer specializing in food, bodies, women’s health, and issues of racial equity and diversity. Garbes began writing for The Stranger in 2006, and became a staff writer in 2014. Her piece “The More I Learn About Breast Milk, the More Amazed I Am” is the publication’s most-read piece in its twenty-four-year history, and the inspiration for her book, Like a Mother: A Feminist Journey Through the Science and Culture of Pregnancy. Garbes is an experienced public speaker, frequent radio and podcast guest, and event moderator. She grew up in a food-obsessed, immigrant Filipino household and now lives in Seattle with her husband and two children.

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Comics, Spring

Episode #123: John Jennings, illustrator and co-adaptor of Octavia Butler’s KINDRED

Episode #123: John Jennings, illustrator and co-adaptor of Octavia Butler’s KINDRED

John Jennings is Professor, Media and Cultural Studies,  University of California, Riverside.  His work centers around intersectional narratives regarding identity politics and popular media. Jennings is co-editor of the Eisner Award-winning essay collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art and co-founder/organizer of The Schomburg Center’s Black Comic Book Festival in Harlem. He is co-founder and organizer of the MLK NorCal’s Black Comix Arts Festival in San Francisco and also SOL-CON: The Brown and Black Comix Expo at the Ohio State University. Jennings sits on the editorial advisory boards for The Black Scholar and the new Ohio State Press imprint New Suns: Race, Gender and Sexuality in the Speculative.

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Fiction, Interview, Spring, YA Lit

Episode #122: Lilliam Rivera, author of THE EDUCATION OF MARGOT SANCHEZ

Episode #122: Lilliam Rivera, author of THE EDUCATION OF MARGOT SANCHEZ!

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Lilliam Rivera is an award-winning writer and author of The Education of Margot Sanchez, a contemporary young adult novel forthcoming from Simon & Schuster on February 21, 2017.

She is a 2016 Pushcart Prize winner and a 2015 Clarion alumni with a Leonard Pung Memorial Scholarship. She has been awarded fellowships from PEN Center USA, A Room Of Her Own Foundation, and received a grant from the Elizabeth George Foundation. Her short story “Death Defiant Bomba” received honorable mention in Bellevue Literary Review’s 2014 Goldenberg Prize for Fiction, selected by author Nathan Englander. Lilliam was also a finalist for AWP’s 2014 WC&C Scholarship Competition.

Lilliam’s work has appeared in Tin House, Tahoma Literary Review, Los Angeles Times, Latina, USA Today, Cosmo for Latinas, Sundog Lit, Midnight Breakfast, Bellevue Literary Review, The Rumpus.net, and Los Angeles Review of Books.

She hosts a monthly literary radio show, Literary Soundtrack, on RadioSombra.org. Past guests have included Laila Lalami, Victor LaValle, Matt Johnson, Sonia Manzano, Azar Nafisi, among others. She’s also moderated panels for the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, PEN Center USA and more.

Lilliam is represented by Eddie Schneider of JABberwocky Literary Agency. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Fiction, Interview, Winter

Episode #121: Jade Chang, author of THE WANGS VS. THE WORLD

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Debut novelist Jade Chang is the author of The Wangs vs. the World, out on October 4th from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

She has worked as an arts and culture journalist and editor for publications like the BBC, Metropolis, Glamour, and The Los Angeles Times Magazine. She was recently an editor at Goodreads. Her first paying job after college was as a researcher for the J. Peterman catalog. (Yes, where Elaine worked on Seinfeld—it’s real!)

Jade is the recipient of a Sundance Arts Journalist fellowship, the AIGA/Winterhouse Design Criticism Award, and a Squaw Valley Writers Workshop scholarship. She lives in Los Angeles.

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Poetry, Political, Winter

Episode #120: Of Resistance and Refusal

Episode #120: Writers and poets, Lauren Lola, Jane Wong and Tamiko Beyer share writing of resistance and refusal.

Readings mentioned in the introduction:

Teju Cole’s NY Editorial, “A Time for Refusal”

Adrienne Rich’s “XI: One night, on Monterey Bay…” from An Atlas of the Difficult World

If you’d like to submit a recording, please email Rachelle at rachelle.a.cruz[at]gmail[dot]com.

 

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Uncategorized

Open Invitation for Recordings of Refusal and Resistance on The Blood-Jet Writing Hour!

The Blood-Jet Writing Hour’s mission has always been to “spotlight vibrant and (aesthetically, culturally and linguistically) diverse and underrepresented voices from the literary world.”
 
We continue stand in solidarity with immigrants, refugees, people of color, LGBTIQ people, women, people with disabilities, women, and the Muslim community. It is more important than ever to amplify these voices.
 
If you are a poet, artist, writer, critic, and/or educator from these communities, we’d love to invite you to send a recording of a poem, quotation, and/or reading recommendations of refusal, resistance, and love.
 
You may also reflect on your experiences of recent events in the recording. For those of you who teach poetry/creative writing, how are you going about this in you classroom? For those of you writing/not writing, what are you reflecting on? How are you finding the words?
 
In the recording, please introduce yourself – you can mention what you do (I.e. educator, writer) and if you’d like, your publications and website/Twitter so folks can find your work. Feel free to record previously published work; just cite the journal / lit mag.
 
Don’t worry about length. I’ll post them as soon as I receive them.
 
You can record on your phone on “Voice Memos” or any other convenient recording app, then send it to me (rachelle.a.cruz@gmail.com) as an MP3.
 
Please feel free to send this request to any other writers/poets who would like to contribute.
 
My best to you,
Rachelle
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Fall, Interview, YA Lit

Interview with Melissa de la Cruz, author of Something in Between

Our first video interview with Melissa de la Cruz, author of Something in Between, with guest co-host, Cherisse Nadal!

 

A little bit about Something in Between:

With her gusty and poignant new novel, Something in Between, #1 New York Times bestselling author Melissa de la Cruz tackles a subject close to her heart. The story of a smart and determined immigrant girl trying to penetrate the American Dream, it is a work of fiction that resides in the reality we live today, showing the human side of debates about immigration reform, citizenship, and what it really means to be an American.

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Melissa de la Cruz is the #1 New York Times, #1 Publisher’s Weekly and #1 Indie Bound bestselling author of many critically acclaimed and award-winning novels for readers of all ages. Her books have also topped the USA Today, Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times bestseller lists, and have been published in over twenty countries. A former fashion and beauty editor, Melissa has written for The New York Times, Marie Claire, Harper’s Bazaar, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Allure, The San Francisco Chronicle, McSweeney’s, Teen Vogue, CosmoGirl! and Seventeen. She has also appeared as an expert on fashion, trends and fame for CNN, E! and FoxNews. Melissa grew up in Manila and moved to San Francisco with her family, where she graduated high school salutatorian from The Convent of the Sacred Heart. At Columbia University, she majored in art history and English. Today she lives in Los Angeles and Palm Springs with her husband and daughter.

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Cherisse Yanit Nadal is a recipient of PAWA, Inc.’s Manuel G. Flores Prize in Writing and is a 2013 VONA Fellow. Her work has been published in Oatmeal Magazine and featured in Dirty Laundry Lit, Sunday Jump, and Tuesday Night Cafe. She is a former West Coast Correspondent for DC Asian Pacific American Film, Inc. and has also served two years as Assistant Editor at Kaya Press. Cherisse co-created and co-hosted the two-year literary podcasting project Blue Book Buzz. She can often be found singing behind her steering wheel on any number of L.A. freeways. She one-ups Queen Bey by adding tea and chia to the hot sauce in her bag… swag. You can follow her on twitter @cherisseyanit.

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Fall, Interview

Episode #119: Ramzi Fawaz, author of THE NEW MUTANTS: SUPERHEROES AND THE RADICAL IMAGINATION OF AMERICAN COMICS

Episode #119 with Ramzi Fawaz, author of The New Mutants: Superheroes and the Radical Imagination of American Comics.

 

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A bit about the book:

In The New Mutants, Ramzi Fawaz draws upon queer theory to tell the story of these monstrous fantasy figures and how they grapple with radical politics from Civil Rights and The New Left to Women’s and Gay Liberation Movements. Through a series of comic book case studies – including The Justice League of America, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, and The New Mutants –alongside late 20th century fan writing, cultural criticism, and political documents, Fawaz reveals how the American superhero modeled new forms of social belonging that counterculture youth would embrace in the 1960s and after. The New Mutantsprovides the first full-length study to consider the relationship between comic book fantasy and radical politics in the modern United States.

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Ramzi Fawaz is an Assistant Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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A Writing Podcast with Rachelle Cruz, Muriel Leung and MT Vallarta