Abalone Mountain Press Podcast

In this episode of Abalone Mountain Press, I speak with Boderra Joe about their newly released book of poems titled, Desert Teeth. Desert Teeth is a collection of poetry that unfolds the wakening shift of scarred violence affecting native people and land for centuries, where alcohol and uranium, two of many elements, continue to take the lives of our relatives. Each poem lingers and holds the face of the reader through deep explorations of grief, family, identity, and love. These poems walk out on their own with the memories and images that flicker by, like a thought too frightened to talk. The vulnerability and rawness in each poem expands the perspective, longing for closure, acceptance, and understanding. Each poem lives in language and landscape, all while the haunting violence interferes. Beauty has its way of revealing itself.

Boderra Joe is a Diné poet, journalist, and photographer from Bááhazł'ah (Twin Lakes), New Mexico, on the Navajo Nation. She is Bit’ahnii (Folded Arms Clan), born for Tabááha (Water’s Edge Clan). She holds an MFA and BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is the recipient of the Willapa Bay AiR Fellowship, the Indigenous Nations Poets (In-Na-Po) Fellowship, and the Bosque Redondo Memorial Artists-In-Their Residence Fellowship.

In this episode of Abalone Mountain Press Podcast, we interview Taté and Ohíya Walker of The Trickster Riots. The Trickster Riots is the first full length poetry collection by Abalone Mountain Press. We talk about the first time we learned about tricksters, what the trickster symbolizes and advice for Native youth wanting to learn more about poetry. 

In this episode we discuss use of names through colonization, connecting back to tribal (Tohono O'odham ) roots, addiction, native masculinity and growing up on the reservation in Southern Arizona.

TW:Drug use, Childhood abuse & assault 

In this special episode of Abalone Mountain Press Podcast, we discuss The Diné Reader.  In this episode we interview one of the editors, Esther Belin about their editing process. We also interviewed Byron Aspaas, Nia Francisco and Laura Tohe. We discuss what it is like growing up on the Navajo Reservation, writing poems in Navajo and hopes for the Diné Reader. 

In this episode of Abalone Mountain Press Podcast, I am speaking with Ryan Greene, Mary Hope and Claudia Nuñez de Ibieta about finding your book community, translating, Cardboard House Press Cartonera Collective and their new project F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS. According to Entropy magazine "F*%K IF I KNOW//BOOKS IS a phoenix-based, phoenix-focused publishing project that creates collaboratively-designed, hand-made, limited-run books by undersung local authors/artists." For more info on FIIK//BOOKS you can read and hear all their books for free at www.fiikbooks.org 

In this episode I talk with Tanaya Winder (Southern Ute, Pyramid Lake Paiute, Navajo, and Black tribes). We discuss her books, Love like words and Why Storms Are Named After People and Bullets Remain Nameless. We discuss grief work, growing up the Southern Ute reservation in Ignacio, Colorado and her journey in publishing in and self publishing.  Content warning, we also discuss a bit about Missing and murdered Indigenous women and relatives. 

In this episode, I speak with Danielle Geller about her new memoir, Dog Flowers.  "In Danielle Geller’s debut memoir, Dog Flowers, a daughter returns home to the Navajo reservation to confront her family’s history and retrace her mother’s life—using both narrative and archive in this arrestingly original memoir" (daniellegeller.com) 

In this episode, I am speaking with Manny Loley, Diné writer. Our interview includes the writing process of the Diné writer and his experiences with identity, storytelling and healing as a native person.
Manny Loley is ‘Áshįįhi born for Tó Baazhní’ázhí; his maternal grandparents are Tódích’íi’nii and his paternal grandparents are Kinyaa’áanii. He is a current Ph.D. candidate in English and literary arts at the University of Denver. Loley is director of the Emerging Diné Writers’ Institute. His work has homes in RED INK, the Santa Fe Literary Review, and is forthcoming in the Yellow Medicine Review, the Massachusetts Review and the Diné Reader: an Anthology of Navajo Literature (UofA Press, 2021)