Let's Have a Renaissance: The DateKeepers Podcast with Itto and Mekiya Outini

In this episode, we speak with experimental filmmaker Jeannette Louie about the nature of consciousness, identity, and perception, the relationship between creativity and autodidacticism, why collaboration matters now more than ever, and what artists can do to sustain their practices and escape from dying patronage systems. A visual artist by training, Jeannette also makes documentaries. Her work has been shown in museums and galleries and streamed at festivals around the world, and she’s received support from the American Academy in Rome, the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, The Bogliasco Foundation, the Center for Photography at Woodstock, and others. 

In this special episode, painter and photographer Diane Burko articulates her reimagining of the landscape painting, historically a static and passive genre, as an active vehicle for capturing the poignant tragedy and high-stakes drama of living in and bearing witness to a changing world. 

Diane’s work hinges on collaborations with scientists, researchers, and the land we walk upon. She uses works on paper and canvas, as well as time-based media, to consider the impressions made by human conversations on the natural world and celebrates the sublimity of endangered landscapes by honoring the complex relational webs that shape place and identity. Standouts among her many exhibitions include the solo show Seeing Climate Change, recently hosted at the American University Museum and cited by the New York Times as one of the best shows of 2021. 

This episode is guest-hosted by curator Mary Salvante, whose exhibitions have included artists of local, national, and international renown, including former Let’s Have a Renaissance guests Joyce Kozloff and Julie Heffernan. Mary holds a Master of Science in Arts Administration from Drexel University and brings to her current position as Director and Curator of the Rowan University Museum of Contemporary Art 30+ years of experience in the educational, for-profit, and non-profit sectors. 

In this episode, we speak with actor, playwright, and director Michael P. Dalberg about his upbringing in rural Wisconsin, how it shaped his sense of time, how time in turn shapes his perception of identity, rule-breaking, meaning-making, the distinct potentialities of adaptation, and his upcoming reimagining of Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, for the stage. Michael’s oeuvre runs the gamut from dark comedy to intimate drama to mythology and folklore and includes adaptations of Cyrano de Bergerac (On the Side Publishing, 2018) and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (Idle Muse Theatre Company, 2022) as well as several original works, most recently his “Best of” finalist, The Blood Countess (Idle Muse Theatre Company, 2025). 

In this episode, we talk about publicists—the good, the bad, and the ugly—from our dual POV as authors and podcasters. Our goal, as always, is to help you make informed decisions about how to navigate your creative practice, build your platform, reach new audiences, and cultivate a sustainable creative career.

In this episode, we speak with Jeremy Schraffenberger, poet, author, educator, and editor of The North American Review, about his many deaths and resurrections, what it means to lose a mother, the history of the NAR, his editorial philosophy, what types of submissions he’s currently seeking, and more. Jeremy has published several collections of poetry, most recently Dueling Shovels (Final Thursday Press, 2026) and has won the Seattle Review’s Poetry Prize, Arkana’s Creative Nonfiction Prize, Revolver’s Wanted Fiction Contest, and others. Over the years, he’s given numerous lectures and taught seminars on the life and work of the famous Iowa farmer-poet James Hearst. His work can also be read in the Mid-American Review, Best Creative Nonfiction, Notre Dame Review, Poetry East, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. 

In this episode, we speak with multi-genre writer Acie Clark about finding his voice as a poet, how to curb disillusionment with MFA programs, and why Arkansas isn’t what you think it is (spoiler alert: it’s much weirder). Acie’s debut poetry collection, Small Talk, was released this month by Hub City Press, where it was selected by Derrick Austin (also a former guest on Let's Have a Renaissance) as the winner of the New Southern Voices Poetry Prize. Acie holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Alabama, has been supported by the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Rhode Island, and teaches film, theater, and creative writing at the University of Central Arkansas and the Interlochen Center for the Arts.

In this episode, we speak with author, playwright, and cultural critic Gwydion Suilebhan about the cheapening of language in the digital age, the cost of political correctness for the marginalized, the joys of co-authorship, and more. Gwydion’s writes on topics ranging from the history of Jewish comedy to the intersection of technology and theatre, solo and in collaboration with his long-time friend, the philosopher Steven Gimbel. He’s been anthologized in Best American Short Plays and has received one Individual Artist Fellowship from the Maryland State Arts Council, who also honored him with a Larry Neal Writing Award, two from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and three from the Montgomery County Arts Council. Armed with an MFA in poetry from Johns Hopkins University, he now serves as executive director of the Pen/Faulkner Foundation and as Project Director of the New Play Exchange. 

In this episode, we speak with visual and performing artist Craig Drennen about his years-long project to resurrect the full cast of Shakespeare’s Timon of Athens—widely considered The Bard’s worst play—in various media, the generative function of satire and self-deprecation as artistic wellsprings, and the toxic market pressures inhibiting the creativity of today’s up-and-coming artists. Craig holds two MFAs, one in art history, the other in painting, both from Ohio University, and currently teaches at Georgia State University, where he’s received the Distinguished University Professorship, among other honors. He’s also a MacDowell fellow, an Art Matters grant recipient, an Idea Capital grant recipient, a Guggenheim fellow, and much more. 

In our first year of writing and submitting together, we published in over fifty literary magazines around the world and learned more about the magazine industry than either of us had in our graduate programs (an MA in journalism and an MFA in fiction, respectively). In this episode, we bring you a crash-course on what we learned that year conducting research, running IRL experiments, and fine-tuning a successful submission strategy, as well as more recently through conversations with hundreds of literary magazine editors, founders, and publishers, whom we’ve been vetting to bring on the podcast. If you enjoy this episode stay tuned: we’ve got more about litmags and publishing coming soon. 

In this episode, we speak with Jennifer Militello about her journey to become the poet laureate of New Hampshire, what she’s doing to bring poetry to the people, her origin story, and her memoir, Knock Wood, winner of the 2019 Dzanc Nonfiction Prize. Jennifer has also published five books of poems and one hybrid collection, and her work has appeared in The Paris Review, The American Poetry Review, The Nation, Poetry Magazine, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in the University of North Carolina, Greensboro and a PhD in creative writing from Bath Spa University in Bath, England, and she taught at Brown University, The University of Massachusetts, Lowell, and the Rhode Island School of Design before stepping into her current post as director the MFA program at New England College in New Hampshire.