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

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. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Jorge Grossman about his ongoing exploration of the lost the sound world of the Incan Empire, the Janus-facedness of multiculturalism, and why higher education in the West is in decline. Jorge’s music has been performed throughout the United States, Latin America, and Europe, and he’s received support from the Fulbright, the Guggenheim Foundation, MacDowell, Copeland House, the Bogliasco Foundation, the Fromm Music Foundation, and others. He holds a Master of Music from Florida International University and a Doctorate of Musical Arts in composition from Boston University and now teaches at Ithica College in New York. 

In this episode, we speak with author Ben Miller about what happens when families fracture, how lives can be pieced back together, the centrality of creativity to healing, and the sacrifices we make to survive. Ben is the author of two memoirs, River Bend Chronicle: The Junkification of a Boyhood Idyll amid the Curious Glory of Urban Iowa (Lookout Books, 2013) and Pandemonium Logs: Sioux Falls, South Dakota 2020-2022 (Rutgers University Press, 2024), and one novel, The Parade (April Gloaming Publishing, 2026). His work has appeared in The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The New England Review, The Yale Review, AGNI, Ecotone, The Harvard Review, and others. He holds an MA from New York University, his honors include a fellowship in writing from the National Endowment for the Arts, and he now lives with his wife, the poet Anne Pierson Wiese, while sustaining his writing by working odd jobs. 

In this episode, we speak with artist and curator Mitch Cope about the rapid rise and unfortunate fall of Power House Productions, the Detroit-based nonprofit he founded and ran in collaboration with his then-wife, Gina Reichert, in hopes of mitigating local fallout from the 2008 housing crisis. Mitch holds an MFA from Washington State University, has worked as an artist and curator for the Berlin-based, international research/art project Shrinking Cities, and served as the first Assistant Curator for The Museum of Contemporary Art. He’s participated in numerous creative collaborations, including the Detroit Tree of Heaven Workshop and the duo Design 99, and his work has been shown at the Smart Museum in Chicago, the Detroit Institute of Arts and Museum of Contemporary Art, The Mattress Factory in Pittsburgh, Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, Netherland, Kunsthalle in Dresden, and KunstWerke in Berlin, and elsewhere. 

In this episode, we speak with composer Andrea Clearfield about her work in the Nepalese Himalaya, where she collaborated with Tashi Tsering, the last remaining master of the Gar-glu (Tibetan court song) tradition, to preserve his ancestral melodies. She also wrote music inspired by her experience. Andrea has written over 175 works for orchestra, opera, chorus, chamber ensemble, dance, and multimedia collaborations and has been supported by the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Academy in Rome, the MacDowell Foundation, and others. She holds an MM in piano from the University of the Arts and a DMA in music composition from Temple University, and she’s taught at the University of the Arts and held visiting lectureship positions around the world.

In this episode, we speak with author Kevin Brockmeier about his contributions to speculative fiction, his distinctive approach to narrative as thought experiment, whether the production of a book can ever justify suffering, and whether pain can make us beautiful to God. Kevin is the author of three novels, three story collections, two books for young readers, and one memoir, all published by imprints of Penguin Random House or Harper Collins. He holds an MFA from the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, his work has been translated into eighteen languages, and his honors include an O’Henry Award, an Italo Calvino Short Fiction Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. 

In this special episode, artist Heide Fasnacht discusses her creative process, the materiality of meaning, the value of imperfection, real loss, false nostalgia, and the importance of the arts in a rapidly changing world. 

Heide’s work dealing with instability, ephemerality, fragmentation, and rupture spans a wide range of media: drawing, painting, photography, prints, and sculpture. She’s earned recognition from the MacDowell Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Gottleib Foundation, and others and has taught at Harvard, Princeton, UCLA, U Penn, and elsewhere. 

This episode is guest-hosted by Nancy Princenthal, an art critic, historian, and winner of the 2016 PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography for Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art (Thames & Hudson, 2015). She’s edited Art in America, to which she still contributes regularly, and has also written for The New York Times and many other publications. Like Heide, she has taught at Princeton, along with Bard, Yale, and others. 

In this episode, we speak with author Rose Whitmore about the moral imperatives that writers must uphold when writing nonfiction based on fallible memories and fiction set in cultures not their own. Rose’s debut novel, Exiled, set during Enver Hoxha’s dictatorship in Albania, is forthcoming from Dzanc Books. She’s the recipient of the 2021 James Jones First Novel Fellowship, the Oran Robert Perry Burke Award from The Southern Review, and the Pedan Prize from The Missouri Review, and she’s received support from Hemingway House, Hedgebrook, the San Leandro Arts Commission, and others. She holds an MFA from the University of New Hampshire and has taught creative writing at Stanford University. 

In this episode, we read and discuss one of our stories, “The Virginity Consultant,” in which a donkey’s welfare is pitted against a village’s honor, and a question is answered in blood: In rural Morocco, who gets to save whom? 

“The Virginity Consultant” was originally published in Mount Hope Magazine: 

https://www.mounthopemagazine.com/the-virginity-consultant