Past Forward

Today our podcast connects with Steve Martinez. Los Angeles native Steve Martinez is a fine artist, muralist, photographer, graphic designer, and painted a 20’ x 8’ mural in the 1888 Center. His contemporary work deals with the discourse between the symbolic and the realistic within daily urban life. The thread of Mayan symbols and hieroglyphs—both representative of Martinez’s history and culture—is inescapable in his work, always connecting the present to the past by uplifting, preserving, and honoring a significant layer of meaning and identity.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Steve Martinez

Mike sits down with novelist Liz Harmer, poet and community organizer Trevor K Allred, and a poet Shauna Barbosa to hear the work from their individual projects and discuss the power of audience, politics, the meaning of portals, the meaning of water, the magic of astrology and why fake bluster is important (AND SO MUCH MORE)! Trevor Kaiser Allred has work published in Boned Stories, Eunoia Review, and Pomona Valley Review, and was a poetry judge for DASH Literary Journal Vol 9. He is the Community Relations Manager at 1888 Center, and is a poet at The dA Center for the Arts. Liz Harmer is a Canadian writer living in California. Her essays, stories, and reviews have been published widely. In 2014 she won a National Magazine Award for Personal Journalism, and was a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her first novel, The Amateurs, is available in Canada. Shauna Barbosa is the author of the poetry collection Cape Verdean Blues (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Southeast Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Boulevard, Poetry Society of America, PBS Newshour, Lit Hub, Lenny Letter, and others. She is a 2018 Disquiet International Luso-American fellow. Shauna received her MFA from Bennington College in Vermont and currently resides in Los Angeles, California. Writers’ Block Live! is recorded at the 1888 Center in Orange, California.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each interdisciplinary episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions. Producer and Host: Mike Gravagno Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Guests: Trevor K Allred, Liz Harmer, And Shauna Barbosa Audio: Brew Sessions Live

Driven by their love of music Bright Is My Sun formed a group that would be inspirational and positive. As a collective, they have many different influences and use their experience and tastes as a tool for success in making music. Bright Is My Sun has the ambition and talent to settle into the industry just nicely… especially with their message of positivity, considering everything else is about drugs and violence. They have set out on a mission for a Hip Hop Intervention. “Dope inside, cant no one change it”. We truly love our fans and they are our Rays of Hope and inspiration to be better!

Sounds + Stories is an eclectic music series featuring live performances and entertaining discussions with emerging and established artists. Produced in collaboration with Brew Sessions Live. Special episodes are filmed and edited into a short documentary compilation with the audio from each episode recorded and archived for podcast.

Guest: Bright Is My Sun
Produced by Past Forward in partnership with Brew Sessions Live.

Today our podcast connects with Sarah Nicole Smetana. The Midnights (HarperTeen / HarperCollins) is her first novel. Sarah Nicole Smetana grew up in Orange, California, where she wrote songs, played in a few bands, and successfully pilfered all of her parents’ best vinyl records. She received her BFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University and her MFA in Fiction from The New School. Currently, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their three-legged cat.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Sarah Nicole Smetana

Today our podcast connects with Panio Gianopoulos. Panio Gianopoulos is the author of the story collection, How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money, and the novella, A Familiar Beast. His stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in Tin House, Northwest Review, Salon, The Rattling Wall, Chicago Quarterly Review, Big Fiction, The Brooklyn Rail, Catamaran Literary Reader, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Non-Fiction, he has been included in the anthologies The Bastard on the Couch, Cooking and Stealing: The Tin House Non-Fiction Reader, and The Encyclopedia of Exes.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Panio Gianopoulos Photo: John Reed

Back in February, Mike sat down with poets Eric Morago, Nan Cohen, and Victoria Chang to discuss how becoming a publisher can affect one’s writing, the influence of history and religion, and intense poetry projects, plus a whole lot more! Eric Morago is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominated poet who believes performance carries as much importance on the page, as it does off. Currently he hosts a monthly reading series, teaches writing workshops, and serves as publisher and editor-in-chief of Moontide Press. Eric is the author of What We Ache For (Moon Tide Press) and Feasting on Sky (Paper Plane Pilots). He has an MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach and lives in Los Angeles, California. Nan Cohen, the longtime poetry director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, is the author of two poetry collections, Rope Bridge (2005) and Unfinished City (2017).  Her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Poetry International, The New Republicand Slate.  The recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship, a Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award, and a Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, she lives in Los Angeles and teaches at Viewpoint School and the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program. Victoria Chang’s fourth book of poems, Barbie Chang, was published in 2017 by Copper Canyon Press.  The Boss (McSweeney’s) won the PEN Center USA Literary Award and a California Book Award.  Other books are Salvinia Molesta and Circle.  Her poems have been published in places such as Best American Poetry, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Poetry, The Nation, etc.  She was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2017.  Her picture book, Is Mommy? (Simon & Schuster), illustrated by Marla Frazee was named a New York Times Notable Book. She lives in Los Angeles with her family and her weiner dogs, Mustard and Ketchup and teaches within Antioch University’s MFA Program.  She also serves on the National Book Critics Circle Board. Writers’ Block Live! is recorded at the 1888 Center in Orange, California.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each interdisciplinary episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions. Producer and Host: Mike Gravagno Producer: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Guests: Doug Dechow and Jason Morphew Audio: Brew Sessions Live

Today our podcast connects with Irena Praitis. Irena Praitis’s fifth book The Last Stone in the Circle received the 2015 Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize.  Her poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in more than 100 journals including Southwest Review, Denver Quarterly, and Rattle. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Vilnius, Lithuania, and is a professor of creative writing and literature at California State University, Fullerton.  She lives in Fullerton, California, with her son Ishaan.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Irena Praitis

Today our podcast connects with Jonathan Alexander. Jonathan Alexander is a writer, literacy scholar, and cultural critic. Jonathan is Chancellor’s Professor of English at UC Irvine, where he is director of the Center for Excellence in Writing and Communication. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 13 books, including Writing Youth: Young Adult Fiction as Literacy Sponsorship (2016) and the newly released critical memoir, Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology. He is also the YA editor and a frequent contributor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Jonathan Alexander

Another edition of Writers’ Block Live! Back in May, Mike sat down with nonfiction writer Doug Dechow and poet Jason Morphew to talk about research into one’s own family, separating fact from fantasy, the allure of isolation, lyric poetry and much more! Doug Dechow is researching and writing a book about his grand-uncle Harry Dale Park, who died over France in World War II.  Doug’s article on the 100th Bomb Group is the cover story for the July 2018 issue of Aviation History. He has written about WWII and about aviation for The Atlantic, Air & Space Magazine, LitHub, Fifth Wednesday, Airplane Reading, Curator, the anthology Bombs Away!, and other outlets. He has also published articles and chapters in Creative Writing in the Digital Age, Parade, Poets & Writers, and elsewhere. Doug is the co-author of Generation Space: A Love Story and The Craft of Library Instruction and the co-editor of Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson. Doug is also the Director of Digital Projects at the Center for American War Letters and the Digital Humanities and Science Librarian at Chapman University in Orange, California. Jason Morphew started life in a mobile home in Pike County, Arkansas; he holds a PhD in English Renaissance Literature from UCLA. The Jan. 31, 2018 Washington Post reviewed Morphew’s first full-length collection of poems, dead boy, as one of the three “best poetry collections to read this month.” His second poetry chapbook, What to deflect when you’re deflecting, was published by Poets Wear Prada in September 2017. As a singer-songwriter Morphew has released albums on the labels Brassland, Ba Da Bing, Max, and Unread. He lives in Laurel Canyon and teaches English at UCLA. Writers’ Block Live! is recorded at the 1888 Center in Orange, California. Writers’ Block is a bi-weekly podcast that highlights the work of writers, poets, scientists, musicians, and more to find the story behind the pieces. Host Mike Gravagno digs into his guests work the same way he digs into pie, voraciously and without pretension, because you don’t have to be high-falutin to enjoy talking about art. Writers’ Block is a joint venture from YourPopFilter.com and Anastamos, Chapman University’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Journal, and is available wherever you get your podcasts.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each interdisciplinary episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions. Producer and Host: Mike Gravagno Producer: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Guests: Doug Dechow and Jason Morphew Audio: Brew Sessions Live

A live recording of our educational podcast with Nicole Miyuki Santo. Nicole Miyuki Santo is a freelance artist, graphic designer, teacher, and recent published author of By Hand: The Art of Modern Lettering. Since 2015, she has taught in-person hand-lettering workshops empowering her students to tap into their creativity and develop their own unique voice. She is a kind spirit and truly believes that everyone, kids and adults both, can enjoy using their own two hands to create. Nicole studied graphic design and advertising at Chapman University here in Orange, CA and currently lives in Los Angeles. Visit her online at nicolemiyuki.com and on Instagram @nicolemiyuki.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Nicole Santo Audio: Brew Sessions Live