Inside the Writer's Head

In this podcast episode, 2024 WiR TaraShea Nesbit interviews Pepper Stetler, author of the upcoming “A Measure of Intelligence: One Mother's Reckoning with the IQ Test."

Pepper Stetler is Professor of Art History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. She writes extensively on issues facing people with intellectual disabilities and their caregivers. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The Progressive, the Ploughshares blog and Gulf Coast. She lives in Oxford with her husband and their daughter, Louisa. You can find her online at pepperstetler.com.

In this podcast episode, 2024 WiR TaraShea Nesbit interviews children's book author, artist, shop owner, and disability advocate Amy Webb. They discuss Amy's books, her work in disability advocacy, her experience co-writing with her daughter, the impact of her sticker shop, and more. 

This podcast was recorded at the Downtown Main Library MakerSpace using the recording booth that anyone with a library card can reserve to create podcasts, record music, and more.

Amy's first children's book, When Charley Met Emma, teaches children about disability, friendship, and inclusion. The sequel, Awesomely Emma, recounts the children's field trip to the art museum. When Emma learns that there's no accessible front entrance, she and her classmates work together to make a change. Amy's third book, Emma's Awesome Summer Camp Adventure, co-written with her daughter Grace, was published this year. It tells the story of Emma's experience at an inclusive and accessible summer camp, highlighting the challenges all kids face and showcasing what an accessible summer camp space looks like. Amy founded The Sticker Shop, and more about Amy can be found on her website This Little Miggy.

In this episode of Inside the Writer's Head, TaraShea Nesbit talks with poet Yalie Saweda Kamara about her new book, Besaydoo, a book that Ross Gay describes as "a prayer for us all" and the New York Times Book Review highlighted the collection as "evoking ecstatic attention and generosity." In addition to sharing her insights about writing poems, Yalie offers listeners a writing exercise to try, one which inspired her terrific poem, "Mother's Rules," and talks about her polyvocal community writing project she is doing in Cincinnati as part of the 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

This podcast was recorded at the Downtown Main Library MakerSpace using the recording booth that anyone with a library card can reserve to create podcasts, record music, and more.

Yalie Saweda Kamara is a Sierra Leonean-American writer, educator, and researcher from Oakland, California in the Cincinnati and Mercantile Library Poet Laureate. This fall, she joined the English Department of Xavier University as an assistant professor. She is also the editor of the anthology What You Need to Know About Me: Young Writers on Their Experience of Immigration and the author of A Brief Biography of My Name and When The Living Sing.

Yalie Saweda Kamara earned a Ph.D. in Creative Writing and English Literature at the University of Cincinnati, an MFA in Creative Writing from Indiana University, Bloomington, and an MA in French Culture and Civilization from Middlebury College.

In between her studies, she worked in the field of social justice, specializing in educational access and arts facilitation. She has lived in France, Brazil, and the US and has a particularly soft spot, she says, for Oakland, Washington DC, Paris, and the Midwest. And this year, she was awarded the 2023 Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellowship.

In the final episode of this season of "Inside the Writer's Head" Manuel Iris interviews renowned British poet and writer Fiona Sampson. They discuss Sampson's musical background informs her writing, how poetry challenges us to read in a different way, the secret coherence that often arises in poems, and more.

Fiona Sampson is a leading British poet and writer. Published in thirty-eight languages, she has published twenty-nine books. National honors include an MBE for services to literature, the Newdigate and Cholmondeley prizes, numerous awards from the Arts Councils of England and of Wales, Society of Authors, Poetry Book Society and Arts and Humanities Research Council, and Book of the Year selections. She has been a finalist for the T.S. Eliot and Forward Prizes multiple times. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, of the British Trust for Literary Romanticism, of the English Association, and formerly of the Royal Society of Arts. Alongside international poetry prizes in the US, Bosnia, India, and North Macedonia, she recently received the 2019 Naim Frashëri Laureateship, the 2020 European Lyric Atlas Prize, and, for Come Down, Wales Poetry Book of the Year 2021.

Manuel Iris talks with poet and academic Rossy Evelin Lima-Padilla. In this episode, Rossy shares how she crossed the border as an undocumented minor. Her struggle with the English language, and how her love for writing, literature, and community, gave her the strength to become a poet and professor in the United States. 

Rossy Evelin Lima-Padilla is a United States-based Mexican writer, scholar, translator and activist. She has published her work in numerous journals, magazines and anthologies in Europe, North America and South America. Lima was recognized by the 2014 International Latino Book Awards for her work on Ecos de barro (2013). In 2015, she was recognized in Venice for her poem, Citlalicue with an International poetry award (Premio Internazionale di Poesia Altino). She was awarded the Orgullo Fronterizo Mexicano award given by the Institute for Mexicans Abroad in 2016. In 2017, she was awarded first place in the Concorso Internazionale di Poesia La Finestra Eterea in Milan in 2017. Poet Laureate of the United States, Juan Felipe Herrera, wrote that Migrare, mutare (2017) is "A magnificent set of poems, in a most appropriate time."

In this episode, Manuel Iris speaks with Latin American cultural studies professor and Director of the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies at City College of the City University of New York, Carlos Aguasaco.

Hear about his arrival to the US and how poetry and literature have been part of his immigrant story. This is a conversation on identity, belonging, and creative writing. 

Carlos Aguasaco has edited twelve literary anthologies and authored several poetry collections, including The New York City Subway Poems / Poemas del metro de Nueva York, recipient of the 2021 Juan Felipe Herrera Award for the best bilingual book of poetry granted by the International Latino Book Awards. The Academy of American Poets awarded him the 2021 Ambroggio Prize, the only national award for an author whose first language is Spanish for his book Cardinal in My Window with a Mask on Its Beak translated by Jennifer Rathbun. Aguasaco is the founder and Editor in Chief of Artepoética Press in NYC. He also coordinates the Americas Poetry Festival and the Americas Film Festival of New York. Since 2021 Aguasaco has been a columnist for Newsweek En Español.

Manuel Iris sits down with two internationally recognized poets, Tanya Ko-Hong and Tara Skurtu in the latest episode of “Inside the Writer’s Head.” In this episode, Manuel, Tanya, and Tara dive deep into how they define poetry, exploring topics like belonging, otherness, creativity, and the limits of language.

Tara Skurtu is the author of "The Amoeba Game” and the upcoming poetry collection "Faith Farm.” She is a two-time U.S. Fulbright grantee and recipient of the Robert Pinsky Global Fellowship, the Marcia Keach Poetry Prize and two Academy of American Poets prizes. She is the founder of International Poetry Circle, and the national steering committee member of Writers for Democratic Action. Dara is based in Brooklyn, where she is a writing coach for clients worldwide.

Tanya Ko-Hong is an internationally published poet, translator, and playwright who champions bilingual poetry and poets. She is the author of five books including “The War Still Within” published in 2019. She holds an MFA degree from Antioch University in Los Angeles. Tanya's work has been published in several journals and anthologies and won the DritËro Agolli Award at the International KorÇare Poetry Festival, several other awards, and she has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. In 2015, her segmented poem “Comfort Woman” received an honorable mention from the Women’s National Book Association and adapted into a play by Tabula RaSa NYC Theater and Performance Lab. Recently, she hosted a multilingual reading and workshop at the Fifth Third Street, New York Poetry Library.

Poet Jennifer Hambrick joins Manuel Iris on a new episode of "Inside the Writer's Head" ahead of the arrival of the largest and oldest gathering of haiku poets outside Japan to Cincinnati. The biennial conference Haiku North America is organized in part by Hambrick. Listen in as they discuss the lyrical power of haiku, Hambrick's musical lens of poetry, and information about Haiku North America. 

A poet hailed for her “brilliant” imagery, “masterful” craftsmanship, and “uniquely musical voice,” Jennifer Hambrick is a six-time Pushcart Prize nominee and the author of the collections "In the High Weeds," winner of the 2020 Stevens Award; Joyride (Red Moon Press), winner of the Marianne Bluger Book Award; and Unscathed (NightBallet Press).

Winner of the 2020 Sheila-Na-Gig Poetry Prize, the 2018 Haibun Award Competition of the Haiku Society of America, and the 2021 Martin Lucas Haiku Award, Hambrick has also received awards from Tokyo’s NHK World TV, Haiku Poets of Northern California, the Ohio Poetry Association, and many others.

Is identity a cage or freedom? How do authors write for enlightenment and hope in the midst of despair? Is it possible to be a black artist today without being an activist? What is love’s power in poetry?

In my inaugural episode of this season of “Inside the Writer’s Head,” I chose to interview two brilliant guests to have a conversation about Black history and love. Listen in to my conversation with MoPoetry Phillips and Yalie Saweda Kamara.

In this episode of “Inside the Writer’s Head,” Pauletta Hansel interviews three Cincinnati residents who have founded projects with community storytelling at their core, and tells a little about her own project as well.