39. Writing about Beauty & Wellness w/ Kamala Kirk & Lizzy Sherman

In Episode 39, we talk to beauty editors (and USC alum) Kamala Kirk and Lizzy Sherman about their website Spa and Beauty Today. We also chat about freelance writing and content creation, writing about your passions, pitching your work to editors, writing for digital vs. print outlets, doing social media copy, and carving out your own space.

Read their work (and snag some terrific recommendations!) at spaandbeautytoday.com and on Instagram @spaandbeautytoday, Twitter @spabeautytoday, Facebook, and LinkedIn.

Kamala Kirk is a University of Southern California graduate and has been an editor/writer for more than a decade. She is the editor of The Argonaut and has written for E! Online, Total Beauty, TravelAge West, Malibu Times Magazine, and many more. She resides in Los Angeles and is a proud pug mom. Follow her on Instagram: @kamalakirk.

Lizzy Sherman is an award-winning digital content writer/editor. She has been a featured guest speaker at Cal State University Northridge, Digital LA and The National Association of Audience Marketing Professionals. When she’s not writing, Lizzy enjoys yoga and playing guitar. Follow her on Instagram: @zillizy.

“It’s definitely a great opportunity that writers have to be able to explore new places, meet really interesting people, and ask them questions that the normal person wouldn’t necessarily be able to and just get to learn and explore while creating a profession.” @zillizy16 @spabeautytoday

“All these different opportunities come up that you maybe don’t think of at the time, but someone else comes across your content and wants to collaborate with you, or you end up discovering a new product that you write about…It’s been really fun just being open-minded and seeing what comes our way and trying different things out.” -Kamala Kirk @spabeautytoday

“If you’re committed and are willing to put in the time and the effort, and if you’re consistent, then you can make it happen.” @zillizy16 @spabeautytoday

“Try to get as many opportunities as you can. You’ll get a lot of no’s, you won’t hear from places, but all that matters is that one yes.” -Kamala Kirk @spabeautytoday

“There’s so many opportunities to self-publish online. Even if you don’t have a big audience yet, you can build your portfolio that way.” @zillizy16 @spabeautytoday

“If you’re thinking about sending that email, just send it.” -Kamala Kirk @spabeautytoday

“Sometimes you have to pick a goal, focus on that, see that through, and then [it’s] on to the next adventure.” -Kamala Kirk @spabeautytoday

“There’s a lot of mystery around spas…When we started the site, one of our goals was to make [the spa world] more accessible to everyone.” @zillizy16 @spabeautytoday

“With freelancing, it can be a wonderful thing. You can kind of create your own schedule and have more freedom. But…you have to be responsible. You have to be able to meet deadlines. You have to be able to sit down and write.” -Kamala Kirk @spabeautytoday

“You can be successful [at freelancing], but you have to look for the opportunities and keep pitching ideas.” -Kamala Kirk @spabeautytoday

“You have to be really persistent if you’re going to have a freelancing career…But overall, I love freelance writing and highly recommend it.” @zillizy16 @spabeautytoday

“What I’ve found has worked for me is being able to write a lot of different subjects…Have experience in a few different areas, so that if one area is slow or you’re not getting as much work, there’s still other areas where you can get more writing work.” -Kamala Kirk @spabeautytoday

“It seems like the opportunities in digital are just constantly increasing, so even if it’s not what you want to do as your ultimate goal, I think learning the skills to be able to [write] for digital too and learning about SEO and stuff like that is definitely somewhere that you can find opportunities while you work toward whatever your goal is.” @zillizy16 @spabeautytoday

“Just go for it. You never know what’ll happen, and you’ve just got to try…You’ll be pleasantly surprised, no matter where your path takes you.” -Kamala Kirk @spabeautytoday

“Don’t be afraid. We all get rejected a few times. Just keep going until you get the yes. And eventually you will.” @zillizy16 @spabeautytoday

This episode was recorded on December 9. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

38. Owning a Bookstore w/ Rebecca George

In Episode 38, we chat with Rebecca George about the nuts and bolts of owning and running an independent bookstore, particularly during 2020.

Rebecca George is the co-owner of Volumes Bookcafe and Volumes Bookstore in Chicago, IL. A former educator and writer, she now spends her time slinging books, reading books, talking about books, sleeping with books, and everything else with books. 

You can find Volumes Books at volumesbooks.com and @volumesbooks on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.

Texts, People, and Booksellers Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“As teachers…you’re selling the value of books and of words and getting people to write so that they take value in what words they’re creating as well.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“I’ve been just really working on local people that I love, if they’ve got a book coming out, something I feel like I think I can champion.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“We’ve gone from having three hold shelves to 11.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“You can tell people are reading more…They’re exhausted with computer screens…I think everyone wants to get out of where they are right now, and books are the one thing that can transport them there, effectively.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“I think the cool thing about indie bookstores is they’re a direct reflection of the community they’re in.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“80% of your sales are in 20% of your books.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“The L lines were designed around dead people.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“If nothing else and we lose our business…I’m proud of that, of those relationships that we’ve created with people, that we’ve helped people.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“It seems like people…this year are really trusting in small business…What do they want their neighborhood to look like? What’s important to them to stay in their community after all this?” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

“I think that the one thing that people coming out of MFAs [need to realize] is that not everyone becomes a writer, and I think that the best thing you can do is find ways to champion other people’s writing.” -Rebecca George @volumesbooks

This episode was recorded on December 7. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

37. Imagining a Better Normal w/ Stephanie Renée Payne, P.T. McNiff, & Sarah Orem

In Episode 37, we reflect on the fall semester–and this tumultuous year–with USC Writing Program faculty members Stephanie Renée Payne, P.T. McNiff, and Sarah Orem. We discuss the unveiling power of 2020, the new approaches we’ll carry forward in our teaching, and the importance of self-care and rest.

Stephanie Renée Payne teaches writing in both the freshman and advanced writing seminars at the University of Southern California. Payne’s special topics include experiential and collaborative learning using the city of Los Angeles as an extended campus in her Food & Culture course in the Advanced Writing seminar. Payne’s aim in collaborative and experiential learning is to foster within her students a consideration of the self, the intersection of self with the other, and the self and the other within multiple environments to produce thoughtful, rich, and probing writing that is relevant in a 21st century context. Payne writes non-fiction and fiction. Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals and commercial print publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Dr. Sarah Orem is a scholar doing research at the intersection of disability, gender, and race in 20/21st C American literature and performance. Dr. Orem’s writing appears in Modern Drama, The Journal of Literary and Cultural Disability Studies, African American Review, and Women & Performance, among other venues. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin and an MA in Performance Studies from NYU. From 2016-2019 she was a postdoctoral fellow in American Studies at Smith College, where she designed and taught some of the first disability studies courses ever to be offered on campus. After completing a Mellon/Sawyer postdoctoral fellowship in the Humanities Center at the University of California, Irvine, Orem joined the Writing Program at USC, where she currently teaches.

P.T. McNiff is an Associate Professor in the Writing Program at the University of Southern California. He received a masters in fiction writing from USC and a bachelors in English & Communication from the University of Pennsylvania. He has been teaching both first-year and advanced writing for over a decade; for the last five years, he has also co-taught a summer workshop in creative writing for high school students. In addition, he has served on numerous faculty governance committees at the program, college, and university levels. He writes fiction, non-fiction, and overly long text messages.

People and Texts Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“A lot of the questions I see people wrestling with are questions that the disability community has been wrestling with for years.” -@s_orem

“I want to call this the year of equity and the year of unveiling…As a population, we’re different because we’ve had to look at ourselves differently and we’ve had to look at the world differently” -Stephanie Renée Payne

“I think there’s real hope…that in the push to get back to ‘normal,’ that it isn’t back to the ‘normal’ it was originally.” @ptmcniff

“Please, let’s not go back to normal. Let’s be better.” -Stephanie Renée Payne

“As frontline workers, we see that our students see, and we have to reflect that back to our administration…It’s a big boat to turn, but the students, they make that possible.” -Stephanie Renée Payne

“This moment requires us to expand and to see our students and to meet them where they are. I think that’s the mission.” -Stephanie Renée Payne

“I am borderline fascinated that there are people who still have energy to care about stuff like deadlines.” @ptmcniff

“I feel like the pushback on what we all agree is this sort of reassessing–realigning how we’re doing this–is that it’s gonna somehow inevitably lead to a lowering of standards, and that’s such a false dichotomy.” @ptmcniff

“So many things have happened that have exposed the flaws in this country and exposed the flaws in this world, but I do think that we’re being asked to be better. We’re being asked to be better for ourselves, and we’re being asked to be better for our students.” -Stephanie Renée Payne 

“We have students that are so smart and who are so ready to improve things and ready to change the world.” @ptmcniff

“These Writing 150s, these Writing 340s…seem to be meaningful for the students because it was one of the few places where there was discussion, there was conversation, there was a professor knowing their name and getting to know them.” -@s_orem

“Let’s decouple our traditions and our expectation of what’s supposed to happen from what we actually do and what’s actually possible and think about what’s possible and how we can improve things.” @ptmcniff

“Audre Lorde says that taking care of yourself is a radical act.” -@s_orem

“I frequently found myself telling my students…perfect is the enemy of the done.” -@s_orem

This episode was recorded on November 30. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

36. Daring to Hope w/ Anwar Uhuru

In Episode 36, we talk to Dr. Anwar Uhuru about using literature to start conversations about racial justice, reprioritizing the mental health of faculty and students, centering the oppressions and experiences of other people, and grappling with the construction of gender roles and categories.

Anwar Uhuru is an Assistant Professor of African Diaspora Literature and culture at Monmouth University. They are currently writing their forthcoming book, The Insurrectionist Case for Reparations: Race, Value and Ethics, that will be published through SUNY Press. Their recent publications include, “Textual Mysticism: Reading the Sublime in Philosophical Mysticism” in the APA Newsletter on Philosophy and the Black Experience and “Thoughts on the shooting in Orlando: Autobiography as Activism” in Humanities Review. Their research interests include Black Existentialism, African American and Africana Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Black Male Studies, Surveillance, and Carceral Studies.

People and Texts Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“I’ve been thinking about reparations, but not in a fiscal sense […] I’m more concerned with what does it mean to value a whole person beyond a monetary compensation? And of course, I’m not telling anyone don’t take the check, quite the opposite […] but I’m more so concerned about what does it mean for American society to value a Black life, singular, and then Black lives in general?” @AnwarUhuru

“What would it mean for this country and then the world to value Black life period?” @AnwarUhuru

“We don’t talk about culture shock in the reverse where there’s a singular demographic that rules the majority.” @AnwarUhuru

“The students often get a bad letter on them when often they’re open to [discussions about their privileges]. It’s the colleagues I find that stay in that little pit of privilege, and when you call that out that’s when the tensions and meetings, etc. percolate.” @AnwarUhuru

“A lot of students have said thank you so much for just daring to teach this stuff or having the conversation because oftentimes professors don’t want to talk about it.” @AnwarUhuru

“If you don’t get questioned, then you have to ask yourself, ‘Am I stopping to learn and being open to a different perspective?'” @AnwarUhuru

“My whole project is to get people to think about how narratives are constructed that show up in the real world.”  @AnwarUhuru

“We want students to be thinking about their thinking and not just idly going through things.” @AnwarUhuru

“Everybody’s like ‘Oh, we just have to do that so we go back to normal’ and I’m like who’s normal are we talking about here? That normal, I don’t want that. We really need to be thinking about a new way.” @AnwarUhuru

“Just checking in on all the PTSD that we’ve all been experiencing, with not just COVID, but also literally watching a lynching. It’s become kind of cliché now, but that’s still fresh […] as well as what happened with Ahmaud Arbery and Breonna Taylor and then the list just keeps going on and on, and I don’t want to forget about trans people who’ve lost their lives this year either, as well as people who just lost their lives. All that’s just whirling around in very real-time. So […] the people in charge [of the University] really have to take this into account as opposed to saying, ‘Make an appointment with counseling services.'” @AnwarUhuru

“I want us to think about [James] Baldwin outside of the protester, essayist, novelist, or the queer theorist or queer person and think about how is he grappling with what does it mean to be gendered male, raced Black, and then thinking about loving someone of the same gender during his time and even post-Civil Rights movement. How is he still pushing back against this notion and how when you’re of that construct you’re kind of an amalgamation in everyone else’s eyes except for your own.” @AnwarUhuru

“I’m really grappling in my research with Black masculinity as well as the non-binary discourse.” @AnwarUhuru

“There’s a lot of work done in Feminist Womanist theory [on gender constructs], and rightfully so, but what would it mean for the ‘other gender’ to think about themselves as a construct too, and how does that impact not just racial construction, but also class and national identities, as well as sexuality?” @AnwarUhuru

“When we just look at the binary of male-female, females never get to just be girls for as long as they want to. It’s like, alright, you just get to skip and jump and then soon as puberty hits you’re a woman now, and then literally the shackles of society are on your ankles in ways that boys, for the most part, get to be boys for as long as they want.” @AnwarUhuru

“We’re really in a great space to reconfigure what does it mean to be male, female, or non-conforming in ways that would be super fruitful for society.” @AnwarUhuru

“I know that when I pursued a Ph.D. and then a tenure-track, I wanted to do it on my terms as much as possible, as opposed to being shaped into what someone else wanted me to be. I knew that would not work.” @AnwarUhuru

“I dare to have an audacity of hope, even in this dark chapter we’re all in.” @AnwarUhuru

This episode was recorded on November 17. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

35. Transforming as a Writer w/ Nate Jordon

In Episode 35, we talk to writer, photographer, and RV-er Nate Jordon about masculinity, fatherhood, vulnerability, and coming into your own as a writer. We also talk about seeing beyond the myth of our literary idols, combining writing with other skills, getting involved in your community, pitching your work, running a small press, and writing from the road.

Nate Jordon is a writer and photographer in Pueblo, Colorado. After decades of traveling and working in several beautiful states, Nate has finally planted roots in 2020. His passion for Colorado began in 2006, when he originally moved to Boulder for graduate school. Nate continues to travel with his wife and three kids, exploring the Centennial State and the entire Southwest. His musings about travel, his tragic attempt at full-time RVing, his misadventures in Dadhood and all things Dadlife and other viscera can be found at natejordon.com and screamsfromthetrees.com.

People and Texts Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“I wanted to experience the edges of reality…My attitude was if I don’t have these experiences, I’ll have nothing to write about…Well, I’ll tell you, I kind of had a reality check.” @NateJordon

“Having all of these life experiences that were basically one imaginary Beat party after another, to all of a sudden facing death, tragedy, grief, heartache, it not only transformed who I was, but it transformed my work.” @NateJordon

“Our culture is built upon myth-making.” @NateJordon

“It comes part and parcel sometimes with what we do; there’s drugs and alcohol involved, but the message gets misconstrued, and the reality is for all the drinking and the drugs that are involved in the arts, it doesn’t really create art. It just creates alcoholics and drug addicts. It destroys lives and relationships. That’s the truth.” @NateJordon

“What really matters is the work.” @NateJordon

“In writing, I think there’s this idea of having a plus one. Like if you’re a good writer, that’s great…but if you add another skill, it makes you a little more marketable…[Photography] was my plus one.” @NateJordon

“I started getting involved in the community, and that led to a book deal.” @NateJordon

“Learning about the publishing world was transformative.” @NateJordon

“”If you write it someone will listen…If it’s just one person, maybe that is who you need to be writing to, not trying to meet the arbitrary demands of an audience you don’t know about.” @NateJordon

“I wake at 4:35 in the morning to write because I love it, not because anyone is paying me for it.” @NateJordon

“It’s not about the money, but at some point the money does become important.” @NateJordon

“Vulnerability is the most powerful force behind all art.” @NateJordon

“I opened myself up and started becoming more human in my work.” @NateJordon

This episode was recorded on November 9. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

34. Remixing Poetry w/ Dan Dissinger

In Episode 34, we turn the interview on the host! Tune in to hear Dan break down his journey as a photographer, poet, and professor. Afterward, be sure to check out his performance of Remix Poetix @Inspired Word (Astoria, NY)!

People, Texts, and Places Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“There are people in my poems, but everyone’s ambiguous. It’s also much more on a micro level, like capturing a body part or capturing a moment on the body or capturing a moment from the past or the future or the present and staying on it and using, sometimes, the page where there might be a small block of text, and that might act like a photograph.” @ddissinger

“I like silence, so a lot of the times when I’m reading in person, I’ll purposely stop in the middle of the poem…to then just sit in this moment of silence, to hear if I can hear the silence in the room. I want to hook the audience in. If I hear that silence, I know that they’re listening to me.” @ddissinger

“Don’t worry about silence. Sit in it. Let the students feel it.” @ddissinger

“I particularly enjoy that moment where I can softly sit in whatever it is that I’ve created.” @ddissinger

“I lot of how I revise any writing comes from hearing it…If I can’t read it out loud comfortably, then I’ve done something wrong writing it.” @ddissinger

“[Hip hop] helps me understand the way a word’s going to feel to say.” @ddissinger

“I also do this thing…called Remix Poetix, where I have all my poems in binders…Taking inspiration from DJ culture and that idea of digging through the crates, I would take my binders and think: what if they were turntables? What would happen if I took what I had and created an improvised poem?” @ddissinger

This episode was recorded on November 2. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

33. Thinking in Different Dimensions of Story (or Choosing Fencing over Law School) w/ Kat Howard

In Episode 33, we talk to award-winning author Kat Howard about doing research for fantasy fiction, retelling familiar stories from new perspectives, collaborating on a comic series, learning from different genres, digging into the revision process, finding inspiration in poetry and nonfiction, and much more!

Kat Howard is a writer of fantasy, science fiction, and horror who lives and writes in New Hampshire. Her novella, The End of the Sentence, co-written with Maria Dahvana Headley, was one of NPR’s best books of 2014, and her debut novel, Roses and Rot was a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. An Unkindness of Magicians was named a best book of 2017 by NPR, and won a 2018 Alex Award. Her recent short fiction collection, A Cathedral of Myth and Bone collects work that has been nominated for the World Fantasy Award, performed as part of Selected Shorts, and anthologized in year’s best and best of volumes, as well as new pieces original to the collection. She’s currently the writer for The Books of Magic, part of DC Comics’ Sandman Universe. Her next novel, A Sleight of Shadows, is the sequel to An Unkindness of Magicians, and will be out in 2020. In the past, she’s been a competitive fencer and a college professor. You can find her @KatwithSword on Twitter and on Instagram and learn more at her website.

People and Texts Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

  • Books of Magic (DC Comics) by Kat Howard (writer), Tom Fowler (penciler), Marissa Louise (colorist), Jordan Boyd (colorist), Brian Churilla (inker), Craig Taillefer (inker), Todd Klein (letterist), Molly Mahan (editor), Amedeo Turturro (editor), Chris Conroy (editor), Maggie Howell (assistant editor), and Kai Carpenter (cover artist)
  • Becky Krug
  • Fran Wilde
  • Amy Meyerson
  • Neil Gaiman
  • Lightspeed Magazine
  • Marissa Lingen
  • Richard Siken
  • Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy by John Le Carré
  • Tana French
  • Bobbie Louise Hawkins

“I had to make sure that I was telling the story that needed to be told, not the story that I wanted to tell.” @KatWithSword

“I never really grew out of that grad school research urge, so even though I write fantasy fiction and things like that, I’m always like, let me make a huge stack of books that I can read and take notes on before I start writing this novel.” @KatWithSword

“All the things that I really loved about reading the works of literature and studying the literature of the medieval period or myths, fairy tales, all the stuff like that, I feel like it’s in my writerly DNA, so it keeps popping up back in my work even when I’m not necessarily doing it consciously.” @KatWithSword

“As the writer, you figure out how to tell the story to your artist. And then your artist figures out how to tell the story to your readers…It’s very much a collaboration in the effort of how do we get this on the page in a way that’s interesting and effective and that takes full advantage of the fact that this isn’t just a written medium…Starting to think in different dimensions of story…was really interesting.” @KatWithSword

“There are definitely still things I do [in short fiction] because it [offers] different possibilities than long form fiction. I think it’s a lot easier to experiment with voice or style…It’s a way to be adventurous.” @KatWithSword

“Drafting isn’t fun, but revision is great.” @KatWithSword

“One of the things I have to do is go back and remind myself that, for most people, literary allusions and conversation is not actually plot.” @KatWithSword

“If I feel like I’m stuck in my own progress, I’ll grab a collection [of poetry] off the shelf and start flipping through it. That jumpstarts things for me.” @KatWithSword

“I find that there’ll be ideas in the nonfiction that work for fiction…I think of it as like being a magpie, collecting a bunch of shiny things…that fit in the back of my head until I need them for stories.” @KatWithSword

“I write better if I’m reading a lot.” @KatWithSword

“I definitely recommend fencing over law school.” @KatWithSword

This episode was recorded on October 26. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

32. Writing about Love & Grief & Also Aliens w/ Marissa Lingen

In Episode 32, we talk to sci-fi and fantasy author Marissa Lingen about writing speculative fiction and how to decide which shape a story should take. Marissa also shares advice for how to submit to short fiction markets, how to discover your process and fix a story that’s stuck, and what not to do with the world’s abundance of concrete. Be sure to check out her latest short story, “Grief as Faithful as My Hound,” out next week in Asimov’s. You can also find more of her work on her website.

People, Texts, and Magazines Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

  • Sheila Williams
  • Asimov’s
  • Kurestin Armada
  • Colin Sullivan
  • Nature
  • Nancy Stohlman
  • Dorothy Sayers
  • Lord Peter Wimsy stories
  • Meghan Nolan
  • Magic for Liars by Sarah Gailey
  • Orphan Black
  • “Macey” Jennifer Mace
  • Arkady Martine
  • John Chu
  • Django Wexler
  • Emma Goldman
  • Analog

“One of the things about science fiction that I like is that you can do all the things you can do in other genres, but also then you have this kind of extra wiggle room to play with…You can tell stories about love and grief and the human heart, but you can also tell stories about: what if things were different? And I think that’s important for trying to make things different in the world.” @MarissaLingen

“I think one of the things that appeals to me most about science fiction and fantasy is that there’s just that little bit of extra that’s not nailed down that sometimes gives me another angle on what I’m seeing in the real world, so that I don’t have to take on problems head-on; I can kind of come at them sideways.” @MarissaLingen

“Short stories are kind of my instant gratification.” @MarissaLingen

“You grow and you shift with time, and things change about your life circumstances, and your process has to change with it.” @MarissaLingen

“The most successful dystopian or negative premises are the ones that allow people room to say: okay, so what else?” @MarissaLingen

“Voice and implication are the two tools I use most in flash.” @MarissaLingen

“Flash [fiction] is usually just one crystalized idea…and it doesn’t have any moving parts really. Whereas when I’m writing a longer short story, it’s less, hey look at this cool thing, and more, let’s move through an arc of this cool thing.” @MarissaLingen

This episode was recorded on October 19. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

31. Exploring Voice & Genre w/ Ellen Wayland-Smith

In Episode 31, we talk to author and professor Ellen Wayland-Smith about her new book, The Angel in the Marketplace. We also talk about teaching students genre expectations and boundaries (and how to step beyond them) as well as how to incorporate voice and personal experience into academic writing.

Ellen Wayland-Smith is an associate professor of Writing at the University of Southern California. She is the author of Oneida: From Free Love Utopia to the Well Set Table (Picador, 2016) and of The Angel in the Marketplace: Jean Wade Rindlaub and the Selling of America (University of Chicago Press, March 2020). Her essays and reviews have appeared in Signature Reads, Catapult, The Millions, and Longreads.

People and Texts Mentioned in the Episode

Some links may be affiliate links, which at no additional cost to you help to fund The Writing Remix. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.

“That’s one thing that I found interesting in my research was seeing just how much roleplaying there really was [in the 1940s and 50s] and how almost conscious they were themselves that these were not in any way sort of biologically predetermined or predestined roles. They were very much a fiction that they were constructing.” @EllenWaylands

“Exploring different genres and talking about academic writing as opposed to other kinds of non-fiction writing…has made me much more creative, I think, in my approach to [Writing 340] and has helped me expand the kinds of writing that I see as useful…and as something I want to introduce students to.” @EllenWaylands

“There isn’t good writing and bad writing. There’s writing that meets its rhetorical aim and the genre expectations of the audience that you’re aiming it to. And there’s writing that doesn’t, or that does it less well.” @EllenWaylands

“Your voice is part of your argument. Just because you have a voice doesn’t discredit your case. You can use your voice in order to weave a much more compelling and evidence-packed narrative. You can draw on different kinds of evidence. You can draw on the evidence of your body and your experience… That’s going to be actually a more compelling case than just doing this disembodied thing in which there’s no sort of identification between reader and writer.” @EllenWaylands

This episode was recorded on October 12. Because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @WritingRemixPod.

30. Opening Doors w/ Dan & Katie

For our 30th episode, we reflect on what we’ve learned from this podcast thirty episodes in and what podcasting as a genre offers academia in terms of embodied scholarship and archived, accessible knowledge production.

People and Texts Mentioned in the Episode

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“When you publish an essay or when you give a conference talk, you’re coming to that piece having already formulated your ideas, and you’re then sharing them with a public…What I’ve discovered through the course of doing this podcast is that because we’re having conversations…I’m actually formulating those thoughts in the moment, and that dialogue is helping me refine my ideas. So I may come to the episode with some ideas in mind, but it it’s in the course of having that conversation that I can arrive at new ones. I love that collaborative aspect of it.” @KatieARobison

“You and I are creating an archive of academic discourse that anyone can go back in and listen to. Whereas if I go to a conference, if you’re not there, you don’t get to see that.” @ddissinger

“When I think of a podcast as a genre…the genre is archive…It’s an archive of knowledge that just continues to permeate and hybridize each episode.” @ddissinger

“That’s what I love about having these discussions and having this dialogue in the moment…I can then incorporate that into my praxis immediately. My pedagogy has changed fundamentally as a result of doing this podcast.” @KatieRobison

“[Podcasting is] the opposite of gatekeeping. We’re opening doors.” @KatieARobison

“Vulnerability I think for our podcast is key.” @ddissinger

“What I love about podcasting is that we get to bring our full selves to the medium.” @KatieARobison

“We should be academics that actually acknowledge the 21st century reality.” @ddissinger

This episode was recorded on October 5. Please be aware that, because we recorded via Zoom, there may be occasional audio hiccups. Our theme song is “4 am” by Makaih Beats. You can subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Stitcher and follow us on Twitter @writingremixpod.