Off-Leash Arts: Conversations on Creativity

 

 

Alison Luterman is a writer of extraordinary passion, power, courage and depth. Her work is both timely and timeless, engaging with contemporary issues in profound and complex ways while simultaneously probing the fundamental question of what it means to be human. In this conversation, we talked about her childhood—she started writing poetry when she was six!—her writing process, her recent poetry collection In the Time of Great Fires, her song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark (with composer Sheela Ramesh—song excerpts included!), and the young activists who inspire her. She also reads her stunning poems “Some Girls” (selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the New York Times Sunday Magazine) and “Insatiable.”

Poet-Playwright-Essayist Alison Luterman: Where My Hope Is

Off-Leash Arts with Tanya Shaffer

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Off-Leash Arts theme music by Asher Witkin. This episode also includes song excerpts from We Are Not Afraid of the Dark, by Alison Luterman and Sheela Ramesh, sung by Ashley Burroughs, Gabriela Gamache, and Julia Geisler.

If you enjoyed this episode, you might enjoy the interview with singer-songwriter Holly Near, titled I Am Open, and I Am Willing; and with poet Athena Kashyap, Where A Poem Lives. You might also enjoy my poems, Doing Yoga With the Buddha and The Breath of Love.

 

 

Debra Gipson is the creator of the award-winning podcast Dear Michelle, a memoir framed as a series of letters to former First Lady Michelle Obama. In her podcast, Debra manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving as she discusses her rise from poverty and abuse to the hallowed halls of academia and beyond. “Michelle Obama was everything that I could have been, had I not made bad choices,” Debra explains. “She represents everything you can be if everything goes well, and I represent everything that could potentially go wrong if you make the missteps that I’ve made.” In this episode, Tanya and Debra discuss the ways in which the neighborhood where Debra grew up inspired her writing, her philosophy of human relationships, and the extraordinary resilience that continues to define her path. “I think the magic in our lives happens not when we choose to stay stationary, but when we have the courage to move.” says Debra. “Because that movement, that getting out of your comfort zone, opens up an entire world of possibility. I always say it shakes the universe.”

 

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If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy my conversation with dancer/choreographer Tonya Marie Amos, titled Dance for the Revolution, or my conversation with writer/performer Herbert Sigüenza, titled Black Jesus Was the Original Fake News.

 

 

Debra Gipson is the creator of the award-winning podcast Dear Michelle, a memoir framed as a series of letters to former First Lady Michelle Obama. In her podcast, Debra manages to be both laugh-out-loud funny and deeply moving as she discusses her rise from poverty and abuse to the hallowed halls of academia and beyond. “Michelle Obama was everything that I could have been, had I not made bad choices,” Debra explains. “She represents everything you can be if everything goes well, and I represent everything that could potentially go wrong if you make the missteps that I’ve made.” In this episode, Tanya and Debra discuss the ways in which the neighborhood where Debra grew up inspired her writing, her philosophy of human relationships, and the extraordinary resilience that continues to define her path. “I think the magic in our lives happens not when we choose to stay stationary, but when we have the courage to move.” says Debra. “Because that movement, that getting out of your comfort zone, opens up an entire world of possibility. I always say it shakes the universe.”

Writer-Podcaster Debra Gipson: Everything is Possible

Off-Leash Arts with Tanya Shaffer

 

 

Marjorie Morgan has had an extraordinarily varied career in the arts. After receiving a BA in Dance from Oberlin College, she spent over 25 years dancing professionally and creating dances and performance art to be performed by herself and others. When a serious injury compromised her ability to dance, she shifted her focus to the visual arts, where she’s found joy and acclaim as a painter and printmaker. For the past few years, she’s been captivated by the process of making her own inks and pigments from natural materials that she finds near her home in Western Massachusetts. In this conversation, Marjorie discusses how painting saved her after her devastating injury, how unconscious impulses have guided her artistic journey, and how a voice heard in a dream prompted her to cross oceans to visit the site that inspired a series of her paintings.

Visual Artist Marjorie Morgan: The Landscape of Dreams

Off-Leash Arts with Tanya Shaffer

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Photo by Irene Young

 

Holly Near has had a legendary performing career spanning over 50 years, that has taken her from Hollywood to Broadway to marches and rallies and concert halls all over the world. One of the most powerful, consistent, and outspoken singers and songwriters of our time, her music elevates spirits and inspires activism. Some of the topics touched on in this lively and wide-ranging interview are her childhood on a California ranch, her life-changing experience on the Free The Army Tour during the Vietnam War, her songwriting process, her collaborations with artists such as Ronnie Gilbert and Emma’s Revolution, what it means to her to be an elder, and what she’s been up to during the pandemic. The interview is interwoven with snippets of Holly’s music from the seventies to the present.

Singer-Songwriter-Activist Holly Near: I Am Open, and I Am Willing

Off-Leash Arts with Tanya Shaffer

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If you enjoyed this episode, you might also enjoy my conversation with dancer/choreographer Tonya Marie Amos, titled Dance for the Revolution, or my conversation with writer/performer Herbert Sigüenza, titled Black Jesus Was the Original Fake News.

 

 

Two decades ago, Shruti Tewari left a career as an investment banker to raise her children and pursue a life in the arts. Since then she has acted in projects ranging from independent films to Bollywood Blockbusters, as well as becoming a playwright, screenwriter, and filmmaker, committed to writing and developing authentic stories about the Indian American diaspora. In this episode, she talks with host Tanya Shaffer about the challenges of moving from the finance world to the arts, her passion for elevating women’s voices, and her personal mantra, “think amorphous.”

Actor-Writer-Filmmaker Shruti Tewari: Think Amorphous

Off-Leash Arts with Tanya Shaffer

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In this episode, I talk with Carol Lloyd, author of the ground-breaking book Creating a Life Worth Living: Career Counseling for the Creatively Inclined, which came out in 1997 and is still going strong. We reflect on the book’s insights and lessons, what Carol gleaned from her conversations with creators from a wide range of art forms, and how her ideas have evolved in the time since the book came out. Currently, Carol is the VP and editorial director for Great Schools, a national non-profit focused on parenting and education, and host of the podcast Like a Sponge. Before that, she was an award-winning real estate columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle for ten years and edited the education section of Salon.com. Her work has been widely published and anthologized, including in the NY Times Magazine and on the radio show This American Life, and featured on NPR’s Talk of the Nation, PRI’s The World and KQED’s Forum and To the Best of Our Knowledge.  She’s also a mom of two.

Writer-Editor-Podcaster Carol Lloyd: Creating A Life Worth Living

Off-Leash Arts with Tanya Shaffer

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Tonya Amos is the founder of Grown Women Dance Collective, a company made up of internationally renowned dancers in their forties and fifties who have retired from full-time positions in the nation’s finest professional dance ensembles. Tonya combines her exuberant spirit, her passion for arts and community-building, and her expertise in dance, health, and wellness to celebrate Black history; build cross-cultural, cross-racial, and cross-class bridges; and bring arts and wellness services to economically disenfranchised communities all over the San Francisco Bay Area. In this podcast, she talks with host Tanya Shaffer about her extraordinary journey as a dancer, beginning in childhood where she trained in competitive gymnastics with Russian coaches and faced extreme discrimination in the San Francisco Bay Area dance scene in the 70’s and 80’s (She was told that Blacks were not allowed onstage at the San Francisco Ballet) and eventually leading her to New York and to dance on full scholarship at the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater. They also discuss Tonya’s work with Grown Women Dance Collective; how she became a choreographer by default; her passion for breaking down class, race, and generational barriers; and her plans to train a new generation of health and wellness experts to bring Pilates, dance, and life skills practices into communities that have previously had little to no access.

Dancer Choreographer Tonya Marie Amos: Dance for the Revolution

Off-Leash Arts with Tanya Shaffer

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Photo by Chloe Jackman

 

Singer-songwriter Noe Venable has been called “a homegrown, full-blown musical visionary” (Puremusic.com). Her gorgeously layered songs, rich in myth and poetry, speak to the wilderness in each of our souls. Although she’s still young, she’s already had a rich and varied career, releasing the first of her eight albums when she was just twenty years old. In this conversation, intercut with excerpts from Noe’s diverse musical catalog, host Tanya Shaffer talks with Noe about the mysterious give and take of the creative process, the ways the stages of her life have impacted the evolution of her musical style, why she left a thriving musical career to attend divinity school, and what brought her back to the creative life. 

If you enjoyed this interview, you might also enjoy my conversations with singer-songwriter Vienna Teng, titled Following A Spirit’s Whisper, in which we write a song together during the interview, and my interview with Holly Near, titled I Am Open, and I Am Willing in which she reflects on fifty-plus years of singing for social justice.

You can also see other podcast episodes here, or check out my blog over here.

  

Photo by Patrick Roddie

 

 

 

Singer-songwriter Noe Venable has been called “a homegrown, full-blown musical visionary” (Puremusic.com). Her gorgeously layered songs, rich in myth and poetry, speak to the wilderness in each of our souls. Although she’s still young, she’s already had a rich and varied career, releasing the first of her eight albums when she was just twenty years old. In this conversation, intercut with excerpts from Noe’s diverse musical catalog, host Tanya Shaffer talks with Noe about the mysterious give and take of the creative process, the ways the stages of her life have impacted the evolution of her musical style, why she left a thriving musical career to attend divinity school, and what brought her back to the creative life.

Singer-Songwriter Noe Venable: Pilgrim at Creativity's Spring

Off-Leash Arts with Tanya Shaffer

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If you enjoyed this interview, you might also enjoy my conversations with singer-songwriter Vienna Teng, titled Following A Spirit’s Whisper, in which we write a song together during the interview, and my interview with Holly Near, titled I Am Open, and I Am Willing in which she reflects on fifty-plus years of singing for social justice.