Origins: The International Writing Program Podcast

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Australian writer Julienne van Loon about her forthcoming collection of essays titled, The Thinking Woman, due out in March 2019 by NewSouth Books. Focused on six living, contemporary women thinkers, writers, and philosophers, van Loon engages with their work and their ideas on work, wonder, play, and much more. Van Loon also discusses her novel-in-progress, Instructions for a Steep Decline, and about how research can be a playful creative practice.

Host Kathleen Maris Paltrineri talks with Japanese poet Yoshimasu Gozo about literary translation and his recent collection from New Directions, titled Alice Iris Red Horse: Selected Poems of Yoshimasu Gozo. They also discuss the relationship of touch, sound, color, and fragment in building creative worlds as well as the poet’s transcription of poet and philosopher Yoshimoto Takaaki’s poetry as a form of honoring his work.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Ugandan science fiction writer and filmmaker Dilman Dila about his work in teaching storytelling to filmmakers. They also talk about how his disability propelled him into becoming an artist.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with London-based Singaporean writer Sharlene Teo about her award-winning novel Ponti. They discuss how her novel utilizes the Southeast Asian mythical creature of the Pontianak, a cannibalistic entity that kills and eats men, to explore a cultural reassignment of fear.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Somali-Italian writer Ubah Cristina Ali Farah about how her novels tell the stories of the Somali civil war and its refugees in Italy. They also discuss her work of collecting stories from migrant women for oral history projects, and the role Somali theatre played in anti-colonial fights during the 1950s and 1960s.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with German writer Esther Dischereit about her groundbreaking work Joëmis Tisch – Eine jüdische Geschichte [Joëmi's Table – A Jewish Story], which is a collection of thoughts, questions, and problems regarding life as a Jewish person in postwar Germany. They also discuss her collaborative creative works, and her efforts toward discovering what is revealed when examining the relationship between truth and doubt.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Burmese poet Maung Day about defying censorship with performance art and the history of Burmese poetry as well as his translation between Burmese and English of poetry and literature.

Guest host Kathleen Maris Paltrineri talks with Zimbabwean and South African writer Panashe Chigumadzi about literature’s relationship to feminism, jazz, and anti-racist discourse as well as Chigumadzi’s forthcoming collection of essays, 𝘉𝘦𝘢𝘶𝘵𝘪𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘏𝘢𝘪𝘳 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘢 𝘓𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘭𝘦𝘴𝘴 𝘗𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Hungarian writer, Kinga Tóth, about national identity, as well as her award winning project 𝘔𝘰𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘍𝘢𝘤𝘦𝘴.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Macedonian writer, Vladimir Martinovski, about the music of verse, as well as writing in Macedonian literature.