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

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. 

In this special episode, visual artists Masha Ryskin and Serge Marchetta showcase work that they’ve created individually and as a couple and share the personal narratives and hidden wounds that undergird their individual and collaborative practices.

Masha was born in the Soviet Union and pursued an academic education in painting in Moscow before relocating to the US and completing her BFA at Rhode Island School of Design and her MFA at the University of Michigan. Her work has since been exhibited in the US and internationally and has been reviewed in a number of publications, including Art New England and The New York Times. Her honors include several residencies, a Rhode Island Artist Fellowship, and two Fulbrights.

Serge served Post Canada for 18 years before quitting in 1993 and to launch his artistic career. A graduate from Université du Québec à Montréal, he’s participated in and curated numerous solo and group exhibitions in Canada, Europe, and the United States, directed the non-profit organization C2S Arts et Événements, and received grants from the Fondation Ténot in France, Ragdale Foundation in the US, and Conseil des Arts et Lettres du Québec in Canada. 

Since 2011, Masha and Serge have maintained a collaborative practice investigating displacement and memory. Together, they’ve been invited to numerous residencies and exhibited their work internationally.

In this episode, we speak with singer-songwriter and producer John Garrison about lessons learned from a life in music, the cost (to your neighbors) of becoming a professional musician, and whether today’s pop musicians are still pushing creative boundaries. John has devoted his life to music as a singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer, and composer for TV and film. He was a founding member and lead singer of the British alt rock band Budapest from 1999 to 2006, formed half of the duo Glass Ear along with actor Pernille Anderson, and since becoming a father has recorded three albums under the moniker Satellites.

In this episode, we speak with author Glenn Kurtz about the art of remaking oneself, thematic throughlines linking his three very different books, and the moral ambiguity of attempting to represent individuals and reclaim communities that history has sought to erase. Glenn began his career as a classical guitarist, graduated from the New England Conservatory-Tufts University double degree program, earned a PhD in comparative literature and German from Stanford University, and has authored three books: Practicing: A Musician’s Return to Music (Knopf, 2008), Three Minutes in Poland: Discovering a Lost World in a 1938 Family Film (Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 2014), and Men at Work: The Empire State Building and the Untold Story of the Craftsmen Who Built It (Seven Story Publishing, 2025). His honors include a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation, his writing has appeared in ZYZZYVA, Artweek, Tema Celeste, and elsewhere, and he’s taught at both Stanford and the California College of the Arts. 

In this episode, we read one of our most popular stories, “Johnny, From Another World,” in which a freelance ground transportation specialist picks up a hitchhiker headed to Jerusalem in hopes of implementing a plan for world peace engineered by benevolent aliens. This one originally appeared in Literally Stories in August of 2025:

https://literallystories2014.com/2025/08/06/johnny-from-another-world-by-itto-and-mekiya-outini/

We’re excited to bring it to you today, along with the story of how it assumed its present form. Sit back, and buckle in. 

In this episode, we speak with author Josh Weil about his daring choice to debut with a triptych of novellas, how crushes have shaped his life’s macro-trajectory, his year in the Soviet Union, and his approach to the structural challenge of writing plot-driven fiction about isolation. Hailed by Colum McCann as one of “the most gifted writers of his generation,” Josh is the author of four books: The New Valley: Novellas (Grove Press, 2009), The Great Glass Sea: A Novel (Grove Press, 2014), The Age of Perpetual Light: Stories (Grove Press, 2017), and What Came West: A Novel(Doubleday2026). His work has attracted literary accolades including the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the California Book Award, the GrubStreet National Book Prize, and the Pushcart Prize. He’s also the recipient of a MacDowell fellowship and two Fulbrights, among other honors. He holds an MFA from Columbia University and has taught there as well as at New York University, Brooklyn College, Sierra Nevada College, the New School, and elsewhere.