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

Joel Hoffman’s classical compositions draw from a wide range of sources, including Eastern European folk music, Chinese traditional music, and bebop. He holds degrees from the University of Wales and Juilliard and has received awards from the MacDowell Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the American Music Center, and others. In this episode, we discuss the creative benefits of life as an outsider, ways to make a living as a classical composer, and Joel's fruitful, quarter-century-long engagement with Chinese musical traditions.

Reena Shah is an author, a traveler, a public schoolteacher, a former dancer, a Steinbeck fellow, and a Fulbright scholar. In this episode, we discuss the circuitous development of her debut novel, Every Happiness, what publishing with Bloomsbury taught her, and how she learned to stop worrying and let her characters take the lead. 

Gabriel Jason Dean is an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His productions for adults and children have been performed on and off Broadway and have garnered extensive critical acclaim. He currently teaches English Literature and Creative Writing and Theater at Muhlenberg College, where he’s in the process of creating a major in musical theater. In this episode, we discuss Gabriel’s favorite and least favorite plays, the challenges facing contemporary dramaturges, how to channel traumatic experiences into art, the risks run by creatives who portray experiences that they have not lived, and the value (or lack thereof) of musical theater. 

David Biespiel is a poet, critic, memoirist, novelist, and painter. His work has earned many awards, including a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Lannan Fellowship, and a Pacific Northwest Booksellers Award. He currently leads graduate poetry workshops at Oregon State University. In today’s episode, he shares lessons collected over many decades in the arts, discusses the critical role that failure plays in creative revelation, and remembers a pivotal moment that shaped his career. 

Hugo dos Santos is a Luso-American writer, poet, and translator. Born in Lisboa, Portugal, and raised in Newark, New Jersey, he investigates questions of diaspora, memory, and belonging in his fiction and poetry, while in his translations he strives to bring the best contemporary Portuguese literature to English-speaking audiences. In this episode, we discuss his approach to literary translation and his forthcoming poetry collection, Reduction in Force, about labor, displacement, social status, and meaning. 

Laura Goode is the author of several books, most recently Pitch Craft: The Writer’s Guide to Getting Agented, Published, and Paid, developed from material that she teaches at Stanford University. In this episode, we discuss her formative influences, how the MFA system failed her, and how she learned to level up, start thinking of herself as a professional, and build a sustainable career.

Elizabeth Johnson is an artist and writer whose creative practice is fueled by a passion for highlighting the work of her peers and an enduring interest in chaos. In this episode, we discuss her creative process, the influence of her background in science and mathematics, her recurring preoccupations, and how she launched her career as an art writer, and she shares her perspective on where the art world at a whole is heading.  

Scott Pinkmountain is a writer, musician, and host and producer of multiple podcasts, including Make/Work, which was developed by The Rumpus. His work has earned support from the Wurlitzer Foundation, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, Meet the Composer, and others. In this episode, we discuss his many creative outlets, and he shares insights drawn from a long career and countless conversations with artists working across a range of disciplines about how to keep one’s creative practice sustainable. 

Fran Siegel’s drawings, tapestries, and installations can be viewed at The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, Yale University Art Gallery, The Morgan Library Museum in NYC, the Los Angeles County Museum, and elsewhere, and her work has been supported by the Bogliasco Foundation, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the Fulbright Program, and others. In this episode, we discuss her creative process, her sources of inspiration, and the themes that animate her work, and she explains what it takes to get work into museums and galleries, offers advice for artists early in their careers, and shares practical packing strategies for traveling with art cumbersome supplies. 

Danica Novgorodoff is a visual artist, writer, and MacDowell Fellow. Meera Subramanian is a journalist specializing in environmental issues and climate change. For years, they’ve been collaborating on a graphic novel about youth climate action, A Better World Is Possible. In this episode, they discuss their collaborative process and the innovative structure that they adopted to accommodate a complex plot as dependent on deep knowledge of climate science as on character, image, and prose.