Dan & Stephanie Renée Payne start a series of podcast episodes called “Inspired Belonging” on Writing Remix. On this inaugural episode, Dan & Stephanie explore their thoughts and understandings of belonging, it’s connection to writing, and how the late great bell hooks plays such a deep role in Inspired Belonging workshops, presentations, and pedagogy. They discuss their experiences co-running Inspired Belonging workshops and how they’ve been impacted by how people come together in these shared spaces, how the actionable nature of love works collaboratively with belonging, and the role of deep listening in Inspired Belonging writing workshops. They end the episode with their goals for the “Inspired Belonging” series, how they can’t wait to have more contemplative, community-building conversations with people, and they invite people to reach out to to Inspired Belonging for writing workshops.
Approximate Show Notes
00:00 Introduction to the New Series
01:00 Meet the Co-Host: Stephanie Renée Payne
02:05 The Concept of Inspired Belonging
03:06 The Role of Love and Acceptance in Writing
04:04 Experiences and Reflections on Belonging
09:04 Writing as a Tool for Self-Discovery
11:08 Building Community Through Writing
17:49 Conclusion and Future Directions
Stephanie Renée Payne is an Associate Professor in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California, a Board Certified Coach (BCC), and a mindfulness instructor at Mindful USC. In her over 10 years as a meditation and mindfulness practitioner and teacher, Payne has engaged in numerous trainings, including at the Upaya Zen Center, and The Omega Institute, among others. Payne holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and is a doctoral candidate for Sustainable and Equitable Education at the University of Wisconsin. Payne is the author of ESP: Extreme Self-Pampering for the Soul, along with publications in numerous journals, including The Los Angeles Review, Hunger Mountain, and For Harriet, among others.
Daniel Dissinger is an Associate Professor in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California, host of the award-winning podcast Writing Remix, a poet, Kerouac scholar, and writing coach. Dan earned his PhD and MA from Saint John’s University as well as an MFA from The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University. Dan’s poetry has been published in a variety of journals, and Shadow Mountain Press published his first chapbook, tracing the shape. In 2021, he co-created an international network of academic podcasters called The Humanities Podcast Network.
People, Texts & Podcasts Mentioned in the Episode
- Inspired Belonging
- Stephanie Renée Payne
- Katie McNey
- Exile & Pride by Eli Clare
- bell hooks
- The bell hooks Symposium
- UCLA
- PAMLA (The Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association)
- The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck
- Ram Dass
“I have, in the past many years, been using the L word in my classroom and that is love, and I think with a total acceptance that I can say to my students, and I can really say it from a heart space, that I love you, and I want you to do well, and I want you to know me, and I want you to know each other, and I want you to build community together, and understand the depths of who you are and understand the depths of what is possible in your life.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
“Sometimes I think we can define in certain spaces what it means to be an American might not look like all of us, and bell hooks transcends that in her idea of love, that we all are human beings capable of everything no matter what kind of bodies we’re in, no matter what kind of brains we have, no matter our gender [and] our gender expression. And I think we are a stronger people and […] we care not just for one another, but we care for our planet better when we understand our sense of everything is sentient in this world.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
“Building community with one another and learning from one another and loving one another, we really want to expand in that space and do it through writing.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
“Inspired belonging is such an action […] it’s practice and […] we do work like this because we want to practice the building of community.”
-Dan Dissinger
“When I think of the work we’ve done [as] Inspired Belonging in this space that we’ve created […] in the workshops that it is […] letting people who feel far away sometimes, even if we’re in the same room, that they gradually move closer [to each other] and then it’s in the writing. They move closer in the writing.”
-Dan Dissinger
“It’s also learning to walk with ourselves fully, to fully accept all the aspects of who we are and when we do that we’re better at opening ourselves up to others.”
-Stephanie Renée Payne
Introducing Inspired Belonging Transcript
The theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can follow the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher, join the newsletter for a bunch of extras (a Note From Dan, episode-specific writing prompts, and book recommendations, & follow us on Instagram @WritingRemixPod.
Writing Remix Podcast 