Cabana Chats

In this ninth full episode of Cabana Chats, we bring you a conversation with Eleanor Whitney, on walking, zine culture, and living both in the city and in the desert, among many other topics.

Eleanor Whitney is a writer, editor, community builder, and content strategist. Through writing, speaking, and leading workshops, she creates space for people to reflect on their own experiences and inspire them to realize an empowered vision for their lives and ideas.

Eleanor writes non-fiction essays and stories that fuse her lived experience with critical thought and feminist cultural analysis. Her first two books, Quit Your Day Job and Quit Your Day Job Workbook, are practical field guides for starting a creative business. Her third third book, Riot Woman, a collection of feminist essays, published in the fall of 2021 with Microcosm Publishing. She currently serves as the Senior Manager for Content Strategy and Copywriting for Axiom Legal Solutions. Formerly, she was the Managing Editor for All Hands, a publication about life at work from Managed by Q.

Find out more about Eleanor Whitney here: https://eleanorcwhitney.com/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.

Special thanks to Resort assistant Nadine Santoro.

Follow us on social media! @TheResortLIC

On this very brief episode, Cabana Chats host Catherine LaSota pops in just to say hey and share a few thoughts about what community, and The Resort, has meant to her over the past year+, and to share that Cabana Chats interview episodes may slow down in frequency a little bit this season while we are busy preparing for lots of new awesomeness at The Resort in the new year.

Check out the free online Resort network, and find out more about our Cabana Club membership program, here: https://community.theresortlic.com/

Follow The Resort on social media for all of the latest news:

More about The Resort: https://www.theresortlic.com/

FULL TRANSCRIPTS of Cabana Chats podcast episodes are available inside our free network: https://community.theresortlic.com/

In this eighth episode of Cabana Chats, we bring you a conversation with Hannah Bae, on being a generous community member, fighting the impulse to hoard resources, and the permission to take a break once in a while. And we talk about food a little bit, as well as many of the writers who inspire us.

Hannah Bae is a freelance journalist and nonfiction writer who is at work on a memoir about family estrangement and mental illness. She is the 2020 nonfiction winner of the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. She is a 2021 Peter Taylor Fellow for The Kenyon Review Writers Workshops.

Her work has been published in books including “(Don’t) Call Me Crazy: 33 Voices Start the Conversation About Mental Health” (Algonquin Young Readers, 2018) and “The Monocle Travel Guide, Seoul” (food and drinks chapter co-editor/writer, 2018).

She is focused on stories about Korean American culture and identity, and in 2019, several of her essays received nominations for The Pushcart Prize. She was a 2019 Open City fellow in narrative nonfiction at Asian American Writers’ Workshop. Through 2018 and 2019, Hannah served as president of Asian American Journalists Association’s New York chapter, for which she was named AAJA National’s Chapter President of the Year in 2019.

Find out more about Hannah Bae here: https://www.hannahbae.com/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.

Special thanks to Resort assistant Nadine Santoro.

Follow us on social media! @TheResortLIC

In this seventh episode of Cabana Chats, we bring you a conversation full of awesome information about the ins and outs of the publishing world, and many years of the wonderful Minorities in Publishing podcast (and newsletter), with the fabulous Jennifer Baker. We also talk about just needing a break!

Jennifer Baker was named the 2019 Publishers Weekly Star Watch “SuperStar” because her “varied work championing diversity in publishing has made her an indispensable fixture in the book business.” She is a publishing professional with almost 20 years’ experience in a range of roles (editorial, production, media) and is an instructor for Bay Path University’s Creative Nonfiction MFA, as well as the creator/host of the podcast Minorities in Publishing (a 2018, 2019, 2020 finalist for the Digital Book World Best Use of Podcasting in Book Marketing). Jennifer most recently served as a contributing editor to Electric Literature, and she has freelanced as a proofreader, copyeditor, and/or development editor and has written for various publications in print and online.

Find out more about Jennifer Baker here: https://www.jennifernbaker.com/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.

Follow us on social media! @theresortlic

In this sixth episode of Cabana Chats, we bring you a conversation with Tracy O'Neill, on acclimating to new jobs during a pandemic, the importance of eavesdropping, and the fact that even when you are not writing, you are writing. Also, sandwiches are important.

Tracy O'Neill is the author of The Hopeful, one of Electric Literature's Best Novels of 2015, and Quotients, a New York Times​ New & Noteworthy Book, TOR Editor's Choice, & Literary Hub Favorite Book of 2020. In 2015, she was named a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree, long-listed for the Flaherty-Dunnan Prize, and was a Narrative Under 30 finalist. In 2012, she was awarded the Center for Fiction's Emerging Writers Fellowship. Her short fiction was distinguished in the Best American Short Stories 2016 and earned a Pushcart Prize nomination in 2017. Her writing has appeared in Granta, Rolling Stone, The Atlantic, the New Yorker, LitHub, BOMB, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Believer, The Literarian, the Austin Chronicle, New World Writing, Narrative, Scoundrel Time, Guernica, Bookforum, Electric Literature, Grantland, Vice, The Guardian, VQR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Catapult. She holds an MFA from the City College of New York; and an MA, an MPhil, and a PhD from Columbia University. While editor-in-chief of the literary journal Epiphany, she established the Breakout 8 Writers Prize with the Authors Guild. ​She teaches at Vassar College.

Find out more about Tracy O'Neill here: https://www.tracyoneill.net/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.

In this fifth episode of Cabana Chats, we bring you a conversation on the importance of accountability, the ways that genres inform one another, and the awesomeness of the individual writers who support us, with the wonderful writer and person Michele Filgate!

Michele Filgate is a contributing editor at Literary Hub and the editor of the critically acclaimed anthology What My Mother and I Don’t Talk About. At the time of this episode’s conversation, she is an M.F.A. student at NYU. Her work has appeared in Longreads, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, Refinery29, Slice, The Paris Review Daily, Tin House, Gulf Coast, The Rumpus, Salon, Interview Magazine, Buzzfeed, The Barnes & Noble Review, Poets & Writers, CNN.com, Time Out New York, People, The Daily Beast, O, The Oprah Magazine, Men's Journal, Vulture, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, The Star Tribune, The Quarterly Conversation, The Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. She teaches creative writing at NYU, The Sackett Street Writers' Workshop, Catapult, and Stanford Continuing Studies and is the founder of the Red Ink series. In 2016, Brooklyn Magazine named her one of "The 100 Most Influential People in Brooklyn Culture." She’s a former board member of the National Book Critics Circle.

Find out more about Michele Filgate here: http://www.michelefilgate.com/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.

In this fourth episode of Cabana Chats, we bring you a conversation on the attraction of New York City, the complexities of curating events, and baseball as a writing metaphor, with writer and teacher Brian Gresko!

Brian Gresko (he/they) is a writer based in Brooklyn, and the editor of the anthology When I First Held You: 22 Critically Acclaimed Writers Talk About the Triumphs, Challenges, and Transformative Experience of Fatherhood. He identifies as white and gender noncomforming. His work has appeared in Longreads, The Literary Hub, The Atlantic, The Rumpus, the L.A. Review of Books, and Poets & Writers magazine, among numerous other publications. He co-runs the esteemed Pete's Reading Series, and during the 2020 quarantine hosted The Antibody, an online reading and conversation series. He currently teaches for Jericho Writers and Catapult, and has previously led workshops and classes for the Sackett Street Writing Workshops, The Center for Fiction, and the New York Public Library. Brian received his MFA in Creative Writing from The New School, and graduated from Oberlin College as a first-generation college student with a self-designed, cross-disciplinary major entitled "Narrativity in Film."

Find out more about Brian Gresko here: https://www.briangresko.com/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.

In this third episode of Cabana Chats, we bring you a conversation on the fluidity of communities, the many ways one can enter the publishing world, and the importance of building a community of supporters for yourself, with writer/editor Nadxi Nieto!

Nadxi Nieto is an Executive Editor at Flatiron Books and serves on the board of Latinx in Publishing, and she has held a wide variety of jobs in the publishing world. She also edits anthologies with Lincoln Michel, most recently Tiny Nightmares: Very Short Tales of Horror.

Follow Nadxi Nieto on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/nadxinieto

Learn more about Latinx in Publishing here: https://latinxinpublishing.com/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.

It's our SECOND episode of Cabana Chats, a podcast about writing and community, brought to you by The Resort!

Hala chats with host Catherine LaSota about the many professional hats she wears, the push and pull between her introvert and extrovert selves, and how her relationship to social media has changed over the past year, among other topics.

Find out more about Hala Alyan here: https://www.halaalyan.com/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.

Welcome to the first episode of Cabana Chats, a podcast about writing and community, brought to you by The Resort!

Courtney chats with host Catherine LaSota about her community of not just writers but creative people from a variety of disciplines, as well as her role as a supporter of other writers, and the need for writers to have a good therapist, among other topics.

Find out more about Courtney Maum here: https://www.courtneymaum.com/

Cabana Chats is hosted by Resort founder Catherine LaSota.