PEN America Emerging Voices Podcast

2018 Emerging Voices Fellow Jubi Arriola-Headley talks about the lack of equity in creative writing, the importance of essential truth over fact, and accepting the new virtual norm as it relates to community, claiming connections can be made through a screen. It's all just a matter of intention. * Jubi Arriola-Headley is a blacqueer poet, storyteller, & first-generation United Statesian born to Bajan (Barbadian) parents. His first collection of poems, original kink, is forthcoming (October 2020) from Sibling Rivalry Press. A 2018 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow & an alumnx of the VONA & Lambda Literary writing communities, Jubi recently graduated from the University of Miami with his MFA in poetry. You can find him at justjubi.com

Pulled from the vault for your listening enjoyment, it is the 2017 Emerging Voices Final Reading, live from the Skirball Cultural Center. The 2017 Fellows Soleil Davíd, Peter H.Z. Hsu, Kirin Khan, Chinyere Nwodim, and Jessica Shoemaker read their poetry and fiction, with introductions written by their mentors Jade Chang, Amelia Gray, Ashaki M. Jackson (read by Douglas Kearney), Dana Johnson, and J. Ryan Stradal.

1999 Emerging Voices Fellow Dr. Stephanie Han talks to us about polyculturalism, protests, and the pandemic; our increased ability to conceptualize a narrative after the internet; and delivers an inspirational rant on why we write that's worthy of a Ted Talk. Listen and then sign up for one of her creative writing classes this summer. Visit stephaniehan.com for details. * Stephanie Han is an author, speaker, and educator. Her debut short story collection “Swimming in Hong Kong” (Willow Springs Books/distributed by University of Washington Press) won the Paterson Fiction Prize and was the sole finalist for both the AWP Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction and the Spokane Prize, in addition to making the shortlist for the Asian Books Blog Award. Individual stories won awards from Nimrod International Literary Journal, Santa Fe Writer’s Project, and the South China Morning Post. Han is City University of Hong Kong’s first English literature PhD. She resides and teaches in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Normally, this is the time for the EV Spring Reading. Friends, loved ones, and the local literary community all gather to meet the fellows and to hear them perform. With the shelter in place orders in effect, we aren't able to host the 2020 EVs in public, so they're reading on the podcast instead! In addition, Amanda talks to Megan, Damien, Claire, Shannon, and M. about the uncertain times we are living in, a Tongva arts journal, who should play you in your movie, unusual superpowers, roommates, and writing sex, proving that even virtual connections can be life-affirming, and that stories are powerful beyond measure. To learn more about the 2020 Fellows, visit pen.org

1999 Emerging Voices Fellow Shonda Buchanan talks about nurturing communities that reach beyond the page, writing your life into existence, and the importance of language. Listen to hear her explain to fellowship manager Amanda Fletcher why you should never call her a performer. ** Shonda Buchanan is an award-winning poet, author, journalist and educator at The College of William & Mary, Hampton University, Loyola Marymount University, among other places. Her recently published memoir BLACK INDIAN explores her mixed-race identity. She also is the author of WHO’S AFRAID OF BLACK INDIANS? and EQUIPOISE: POEMS FROM GODDESS COUNTRY, and editor of two anthologies, VOICES FROM LEIMERT PARK and VOICES FROM LEIMERT PARK REDUX. She is the literary editor of Harriet Tubman Press and a member of the advisory board of Beyond Baroque Literary Arts and Angels Flight • literary west. To learn more, visit shondabuchanan.com.

In celebration of the launch of her memoir–HOME IS A STRANGER–in the middle of a pandemic, 2009 EV Parnaz Foroutan talks about shaking the self in times of strife, the reckoning required to digest suffering, and falling in love with the people we used to be. ** Parnaz Foroutan is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Girl from the Garden (Ecco 2015) which received the PEN Emerging Voices Award and was named one of Booklist’s “Top 10 First Novels” of 2015. Her memoir Home is a Stranger (Chicago Review Press 2020) is about her journey back to Iran as a young woman, two decades after her family fled the rise of the Islamic Theocracy. Her essays have appeared on NBC Think, The Sun and other literary journals. The essay that made her mother proudest, entitled "America" and addressing the refugee crisis, appears in the anthology Radical Hope (Vintage 2017).

2003 Emerging Voices Fellow, poet, teacher, and community activist Rocío Carlos teaches us how to make a zine, and talks about taking attendance, getting caught in the ditch, and growing up haunted in Los Angeles. ** Rocío Carlos attends from the land of the chaparral. Born and raised in Los Ángeles, she is widely acknowledged to have zero short term memory but knows the names of trees. She is the author of (the other house) (The Accomplices/ Civil Coping Mechanisms), Attendance (The Operating System) and A Universal History of Infamy: Those of This America (LACMA/Golden Spike Press). Her poems have appeared in Chaparral, Angel City Review, The Spiral Orb, and Cultural Weekly. She collaborates as a partner at Wirecutter Collective and is a teacher of the language arts. Her favorite trees are the olmo (elm)and aliso (sycamore)and you can find her on the socials @ninabruja7

The 2019 Emerging Voices Fellows meet for a last meal and talk to Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher about their experiences in EV, commenting on the impact their mentors, master classes, and professional editing sessions had on their writing. Featuring Dare Williams, Judy Choi, Anthony Hoang, T.K. Lê, and Fajer Alexander Khansa. With a cameo from little Lucian. ** Dare Williams is an HIV-positive poet, artist, and activist native to Southern California who is currently working on a poetry collection confronting the erasure of queer culture. Judy Choi lives in LA with her 11-year-old son and is currently working on a novel based on her Texas childhood. Anthony Hoang is writing a novel about a Chinese-Vietnamese family set in 1970s Vietnam and present-day America. T.K. Lê is from Westminster, California. Her current collection of poems is inspired by the Lambretta her father threw into the ocean in the hours before he left Vietnam in 1975. Fajer Alexander Khansa was born and raised in Lattakia, Syria, and Tokyo, Japan. He is working on a short story collection.

As part of Rare Bird Books, Julia Callahan has co-hosted a small press Author Evening with Chris Heiser from Unnamed Press for years. Now, from the floor of her apartment in the Los Feliz neighborhood of LA, she waxes philosophical on roller derby as a stress reliever, how to be an active member of your literary community, and living inside the story of Los Angeles. * As Sales and Marketing Director at Rare Bird, Julia Callahan oversees all aspects of sales, distribution, marketing, and author relations. Prior to joining the Rare Bird team, she worked for four years as Tyson Cornell’s marketing and publicity assistant at Book Soup where she helped coordinate thousands of events each year, notably The Doors’ 40th Anniversary, Ralph Steadman, Tony Curtis, and many others. She grew up in Santa Cruz and has a BA in English. Find Julia on the socials @pesty1079

2014 EV Fellow and Casting Director for the Arena Stage in Washington D.C. Victor Vazquez discusses diversity, talks about taking the mic, our responsibility to awe, The Lion King, and BDSM with Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher. ** Victor Vazquez serves as Casting Director/Line Producer and member of the artistic team at Arena Stage in Washington D.C. He's worked at Center Theatre Group, The Pasadena Playhouse, Cornerstone Theatre Company, and DAQRI. A recipient of fellowships from PEN America and LAMBDA Literary as an Emerging LGBT Writer, he is a master’s candidate at the University of Oxford and holds two bachelor’s degrees from UC Irvine. Victor is the son of Mexican immigrants and Spanish is his native language. Originally from Los Angeles, he now lives in Washington, D.C.

Irene Suico Soriano might not be sure if she was a Fellow in 2000 or 2001 but she is sure of two things. One is that the road to publication is just as long as it needs to be and more importantly, that picking up hitchhikers in your community is a vital part of the journey. Listen to her tell Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher all about it. With guest appearances by Papu and Max. ** A 2001 PEN America Emerging Voices Fellow Irene Suico Soriano was born in Zamboanga del Sur, Philippines, in 1969. At eleven years of age, she and her mother immigrated to Los Angeles, California. Her childhood was spent soaking in the neighborhoods of pre-gentrified Downtown LA, East Hollywood, Rampart/Temple, Melrose, and the Wilshire/Vermont corridor. Her poems have appeared in Philippines Free Press; Solidarity Journal; LA Times; Flippin': Filipinos on America (Asian American Writers' Workshop); Babaylan: An Anthology of Filipina and Filipina American Writers (Aunt Lute); Short Fuse: The Global Anthology of New Fusion Poetry (Rattapallax Press); and Disorient Journalzine, which published her chapbook Safehouses as part of their Emerging Writers Chapbook Series. Irene founded and coordinated the Southern California reading series, "Wrestling Tigers: Asian Pacific American Writers Speak" at the Japanese American National Museum and was literary curator for the Los Angeles Festival of Philippine Arts & Culture (FPAC). She was featured in the Los Angeles Times for her curatorial participation in the ground-breaking NEA-funded World Beyond Poetry Festival that featured over 100 poets from the diverse communities of LA, and co-produced, as part of the LA Enkanto Art Collective, the CD In Our Blood: Filipina/o American Poetry & Spoken Word from Los Angeles. Irene's first full-length collection of poems PRIMATES FROM AN ARCHIPELAGO was published by Rabbit Fool Press in 2017.

Award-winning author of TESTIFY, Dornsife Fellow, and 2018 EV mentor Douglas Manuel joins Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher in idyllic Long Beach to talk poetry, politics, and the cultural capital a PhD affords someone who can't stop dancing to the collective song. ** Douglas Manuel was born in Anderson, Indiana. He received a BA in Creative Writing from Arizona State University and an MFA from Butler University where he was the Managing Editor of Booth a Journal. He is currently a Middleton and Dornsife Fellow at the University of Southern California where he is pursuing a PhD in Literature and Creative Writing. He has served as the Poetry Editor for Gold Line Press as well as one of the Managing Editors of Ricochet Editions. His poems are featured on Poetry Foundation's website and have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Northwest, The Los Angeles Review, Superstition Review, Rhino, North American Review, The Chattahoochee Review, New Orleans Review, Crab Creek Review, and elsewhere. His first full-length collection of poems, Testify (Red Hen Press, 2017), won the 2017 IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award for poetry. Find him at douglasmanuelpoetry.com

Listen to the 2018 Emerging Voices read their work for the last time together as current Fellows. Featuring introductions by mentors Lilliam Rivera, Michael Jaime-Becerra, Tananarive Due, Angela Morales, and Douglas Manuel.

Listen in as acclaimed voice-over actor and instructor, writer, and performer Dave Thomas talks Shakespeare, Dark Sith Lords, and the MacKenzie brothers. (And if you hang on until the end you'll learn how to use the cork from a wine bottle to improve your diction.) ** David Thomas has done voice-over commercial work for Gatorade, Coca-Cola, Southwestern Bell, Propel, Citizen Watches, and many more. He has also appeared as a regular guest star on FOX’s King of the Hill. He donates his voice work to the Emerging Voices Fellowship, the NAACP, and Freedom from Hunger. Visit Dave at hollywoodinhollywild.com

Founder of the Long Beach Literary Arts Center and 2015 Emerging Voices Fellow Nancy Lynée Woo talks about DIY lit scenes, the importance of creative spaces, and the power of showing up, while Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher drools over the size of Nancy's apartment. ** Nancy Lynée Woo is an incorrigible optimist and the author of two chapbooks,​ ​BEARING THE JUICE OF IT ALL and RAMPANT. She teaches​ ​a poetry workshop called Surprise the Line and organizes not one but TWO Long Beach reading series, Off The Page, and Poetry on the Rocks with Mike Gravagno. Please support Nancy in all of her endeavors at patreon.com/fancifulnance

Listen to author (and Author Evening host), mentor, teacher, and editor Samantha Dunn rant about being a memoirist, a ghost, and an "enemy of the people" while Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher says "like" a lot. ** Samantha Dunn is the author of FAILING PARIS, a finalist for the PEN West Fiction Award in 2000, and the memoirs NOT BY ACCIDENT and FAITH IN CARLOS GOMEZ. She has ghostwritten several books and her writing has been anthologized in WOMEN ON THE EDGE, DANCING AT THE SHAME PROM, and in DRINKING DIARIES. Sam teaches creative writing for UCLA Extension Writers' Program and the Idyllwild Arts Center and is the Executive Editor for COAST magazine.

Poetry Master Class Instructor F. Douglas Brown reads us a poem, tells us what’s in a name, and asks us to consider skinheads, while Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher coughs a lot. ** Both a Cave Canem and a Kundiman fellow, F. Douglas Brown is the author of two poetry collections: ICON and ZERO TO THREE, and co-author of the chapbook BEGOTTEN. Doug is a DJ and father to three who also teaches English and African American Poetry at Loyola High School of Los Angeles.

Emerging Voices Fellowship Manager Amanda Fletcher answers the question, “Why a podcast?” and Prose Master Class Instructor Alex Espinoza talks workshop etiquette, cruising, and Lucha Libre. ** Alex Espinoza was born in Tijuana, Mexico and raised in suburban Los Angeles. Author of the novel STILL WATER SAINTS and THE FIVE ACTS OF DIEGO LÉON, he received an MFA from the University of California, Irvine. Espinoza is also the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing and Literary Arts at Cal State LA.

PEN America and Tongue & Groove present a reading by the 2018 Emerging Voices Fellows at The Hotel Cafe. Join us for a night of readings and drinks with musical guest Elephants with Guns. Featuring: Jubi Arriola-Headley Ron Dowell Natalie Mislang Mann Angela M. Sanchez Francisco Uribe