How can literature help us extend our empathic imaginations? How can writing and reading expand our curiosity and compassion for people in situations distant from our own?

Jim Shepard is the author of seven previous novels, most recently The Book of Aron (winner of the 2016 PEN New England Award, the Sophie Brody medal for achievement in Jewish literature, the Ribalow Prize for Jewish literature, the Clark Fiction Prize, and a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award) and five story collections, including Like You’d Understand, Anyway, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won The Story Prize. His short fiction has appeared in, among other magazines, The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, McSweeney’s, The Paris Review, The Atlantic, Esquire, Tin House, Granta, Zoetrope, Electric Literature, and Vice, and has often been selected for The Best American Short Stories and The PEN/O. Henry Prize Stories. He lives in Williamstown, Massachusetts, with his wife, three children, and three beagles, and he teaches film and creative writing at Williams College. His story “The World to Come” was adapted into a feature film starring Casey Affleck, Vanessa Kirby, and Katherine Waterston.

"What the arts offer is what kids need. Which is some kind of human companionship. Some sense that you're not alone out there. And certainly reading is on the decline, and that's a huge problem. I'm not willing to concede that we all should give up reading and critical thinking, but our culture is pushing us in that direction. I have three children five years apart. And the youngest is 21 years old and her connection to the phone is way more profound than the oldest one. We all are dependent on our phones now. But that sense we have that we need to be checking it all the time, that sense we have that we will not immerse ourselves in the arts anymore because there might be something on our phone we have to check, that's way more widespread now than it used to be."

https://jimshepard.wordpress.com

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

In this episode of the Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu and Azeezah Kanji talk with Sara Ahmed about her new book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook. How and why is it that complaining about sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry, is considered impolite? How is civility uncivil, and the mandate to be “happy” a tool for silencing grievances? Sara Ahmed tackles all those questions, and gives us strength and courage to keep on killingjoy and speaking truth.

Sara Ahmed is an independent queer feminist scholar of colour. Her work is concerned with how power is experienced and challenged in everyday life and institutional cultures. Her first trade book, The Feminist Killjoy Handbook is coming out with Seal Press next month. Previous books (all published by Duke University Press) include Complaint! (2021), What's The Use? On the Uses of Use (2019), Living a Feminist Life (2017), Willful Subjects (2014), On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (2012), The Promise of Happiness (2010) and Queer Phenomenology: Objects, Orientations, Others (2006). She is currently writing A Complainer’s Handbook: A Guide to Building Less Hostile Institutions and has begun a new project on common sense. She blogs at feministkilljoy.com.

"She often said I was the daughter she didn't have. And I was the daughter she had, in fact, because I'll say that to you. And I got a lot from her. She was very much willing always to speak her mind. And I would watch her tell my father off. It would be just like, yeah, this is possible! And she was outspoken, but also very loving. She's no longer with us. I never came out to her in the sense of saying 'I am a lesbian' or whatever, but I think she kind of knew. We had conversations, and I think she would have been okay with it. And because she was just a very, very curious and creative person and an enormous influence in my life."

https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/454793/the-feminist-killjoy-handbook-by-ahmed-sara/9780241619537

www.palumbo-liu.com 
https://speakingoutofplace.com
https://twitter.com/palumboliu?s=20

Photo credit: Sarah Franklin

What makes films memorable and meaningful? Great cinematographers are not only translators of a director’s vision but are involved in a dance between director and actor. When combined with personal techniques like handheld, the camera itself can become a character, bringing us back in time and behind the eyes of well-known figures like Van Gogh and Stephen Hawking, which is what Benoît Delhomme did in the films At Eternity’s Gate and The Theory of Everything.

Benoît Delhomme studied cinematography at the École nationale supérieure Louis-Lumière and went on to make his breakthrough as a director of photography for the movie The Scent of Green Papaya directed by Tran Anh Hung. The film went on to win the Caméra d'Or Award at the Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for an Academy Award. Benoît has established himself as an international cinematographer and has worked with creatives such as Al Pacino, Julian Schnabel, and James Marsh. Over the years, Benoît Delhomme has worked on a wide array of films where his focus has been to tell a strong story through the visual. This focus has shined not only through his work as a cinematographer, but also his work as a painter.

"I certainly like a handheld camera, It's a bit like playing a saxophone. It's like the pace of walking or how I stop or I decide to go closer to the actor or to take more distance is so free. No one is telling me to go one step forward or one step back. I have to decide on the spot. So there certainly a freedom like a painter with a brush. It's nice because you have even the vibrations, your rhythms, the actor's rhythms. It's this dance."

www.benoitdelhomme.com
www.benoitdelhommestudio.com
www.instagram.com/benoitdelhomme

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Rob Verchick is one of the nation’s leading scholars in disaster and climate change law and a former EPA official in the Obama administration. He holds the Gauthier-St. Martin Eminent Scholar Chair in Environmental Law at  Loyola University New Orleans. Professor Verchick is also a Senior Fellow in Disaster Resilience at Tulane University and the President of the Center for Progressive Reform, a research and advocacy organization that advocates for solutions to our most pressing societal challenges. He is the author of numerous articles and books, including The Octopus in the Parking Garage. A Call for Climate Resilience.

“I was an English major in college. But here's the thing. I believe that the strongest machine we have, the strongest empathy machine that we have is literature. The best way to get people to feel what someone else is feeling is through literature and stories. And I also think that feeling and emotion are an important part of reasoning and governing too. It's not the only part, but I think you have to understand how people see the world and how they feel about the world. So in my classes, I teach law classes. I teach policy classes. I often assign novels. We read in one of my classes Their Eyes Were Watching God, the case about a hypothetical hurricane in Florida written by Zora Neale Hurston. We read Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, which is a kind of dystopian novel that involves climate change. We've read The Handmaid's Tale in my classes. But I think what these books do is they, number one, certain books that are speculative, like Margaret Atwood's work, Joyce Carol Oates has written some things like this too. What's interesting about them is that they make us, they open up our imaginations and say, Oh, I never thought something like that could happen. We hope it doesn't, but it could, right? And so how do we change the way we look at the future? And it also changes, I think, the way that we understand people's lives.

So even in a book like Their Eyes Were Watching God, which takes place in the early 20th century, and obviously involves race issues and a whole lot of other things. It leads us to think and see the world through a young black woman's perspective in the early 20th century. And there's something about that exercise of being able to some extent put yourself in the shoes of somebody else that I think is really important for governance. I think it's really important for policy. I think it's really important for advocates of any kind because listening and trying to understand what another person is perceiving...You can never do it completely, obviously, but I think it is really one of the most important parts of collective action of working with other people.”
https://robverchick.com
https://works.bepress.com/robert_verchick
www.progressivereform.org/

Twitter/X/Instagram/Facebook: @robverchick @robsoctopusbook

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"It's certainly not the case that scientists should be the only people communicating. We have to have everybody in this mix because we're all in this together. So we have to have good science that's communicated. We have to have smart engineers who can work on the technological solutions. We have to have lawyers who are undertaking climate litigation. We have to have creative artists who can tell stories and appeal to people's emotions. No one group should have a responsibility to solve the climate crisis. It's got to be all of those groups bringing what they call the time, the talent, and the treasure to work together on this. We are all in this together, and we've all got a suite of different skills that have to be harnessed to solve this problem."

Now in the 21st century, with an abundance of renewable technologies, why is the world still using 18th-century energy technology? How can each of us harness our unique skills to help solve the climate crisis?

Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Macquarie University. She is an ecologist whose main research interest has been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems, and the implications of climate change for conservation. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, Director for the WWF Australia and federal Climate Commissioner and is now a Councillor and Director with the Climate Council of Australia. She is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Now in the 21st century, with an abundance of renewable technologies, why is the world still using 18th-century energy technology? How can each of us harness our unique skills to help solve the climate crisis?

Lesley Hughes is a Distinguished Professor of Biology and Interim Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science & Engineering at Macquarie University. She is an ecologist whose main research interest has been the impacts of climate change on species and ecosystems, and the implications of climate change for conservation. She was a Lead Author of the IPCC’s 4th and 5th Assessment Report, Director for the WWF Australia and federal Climate Commissioner and is now a Councillor and Director with the Climate Council of Australia. She is also a member of the Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists.

"It's certainly not the case that scientists should be the only people communicating. We have to have everybody in this mix because we're all in this together. So we have to have good science that's communicated. We have to have smart engineers who can work on the technological solutions. We have to have lawyers who are undertaking climate litigation. We have to have creative artists who can tell stories and appeal to people's emotions. No one group should have a responsibility to solve the climate crisis. It's got to be all of those groups bringing what they call the time, the talent, and the treasure to work together on this. We are all in this together, and we've all got a suite of different skills that have to be harnessed to solve this problem."

https://researchers.mq.edu.au/en/persons/lesley-hughes
www.climatecouncil.org.au

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"The fossil fuel industry is very good at propaganda. They are also very good at targeting students and environmentalists. And they surround themselves with clients like museums, hospitals, charities, public schools, and all of these groups who are doing wonderful work at the local level and who aren't going complain about their oil and gas lobbyist work because they are bringing in money to them as well.”

Why are fossil fuel lobbyists also allowed to work for communities, schools, businesses, and nonprofit organizations being harmed by the climate crisis without declaring their conflict of interest? Why divestment from fossil fuels should include divesting from lobbyists which play for both sides.

James Browning is the founder of F Minus, a research and advocacy group that tracks the extent to which fossil fuel lobbyists also represent victims of the climate crisis. He is also a writer and game designer, and his novel The Fracking King was named one of the best 100 books of 2014 by Amazon. 

https://fminus.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Why are fossil fuel lobbyists also allowed to work for communities, schools, businesses, and nonprofit organizations being harmed by the climate crisis without declaring their conflict of interest? Why divestment from fossil fuels should include divesting from lobbyists which play for both sides.

James Browning is the founder of F Minus, a research and advocacy group that tracks the extent to which fossil fuel lobbyists also represent victims of the climate crisis. He is also a writer and game designer, and his novel The Fracking King was named one of the best 100 books of 2014 by Amazon. 

"The fossil fuel industry is very good at propaganda. They are also very good at targeting students and environmentalists. And they surround themselves with clients like museums, hospitals, charities, public schools, and all of these groups who are doing wonderful work at the local level and who aren't going complain about their oil and gas lobbyist work because they are bringing in money to them as well.”

https://fminus.org

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

"The notion that the idea is out there, but you just need to be in a state to receive it, that's a very comforting thought because it takes the onus off of you. You don't have to be a genius. You don't have to be this big creator. You just have to read and keep healthy and keep yourself open and the idea will arrive. And the funny thing is, usually it arrives to you and then you're typing."

What happens when we die? What happens to our memories and consciousness when our bodies cease to be?  In the end, is it the things we did and the people we loved that give our lives meaning?

Shehan Karunatilaka is the multi-award winning author. He is known for his novels dealing with the history, politics, and folklore of his home country of Sri Lanka. He won the Commonwealth Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his debut novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and the Booker Prize 2022 for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. In addition to novels, he has written rock songs, screenplays and travel stories. Born in Colombo, he studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

www.shehanwriter.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064824

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

What happens when we die? What happens to our memories and consciousness when our bodies cease to be?  In the end, is it the things we did and the people we loved that give our lives meaning?

Shehan Karunatilaka is the multi-award winning author. He is known for his novels dealing with the history, politics, and folklore of his home country of Sri Lanka. He won the Commonwealth Book Prize and the DSC Prize for South Asian Literature for his debut novel, Chinaman: The Legend of Pradeep Mathew, and the Booker Prize 2022 for his second novel, The Seven Moons of Maali Almeida. In addition to novels, he has written rock songs, screenplays and travel stories. Born in Colombo, he studied in New Zealand and has lived and worked in London, Amsterdam, and Singapore.

"The notion that the idea is out there, but you just need to be in a state to receive it, that's a very comforting thought because it takes the onus off of you. You don't have to be a genius. You don't have to be this big creator. You just have to read and keep healthy and keep yourself open and the idea will arrive. And the funny thing is, usually it arrives to you and then you're typing."

www.shehanwriter.com
https://wwnorton.com/books/9781324064824

www.creativeprocess.info
www.oneplanetpodcast.org
IG www.instagram.com/creativeprocesspodcast

Photo credit: David Parry/Booker Prize Foundation