Plume: A Writer's Podcast

Team Plume is reanimating, dusting off the last year, and sharing our first podcast in a while. In today’s episode, we bring you a ghosty story circle with writing that taps into the otherworldly… just in time for Halloween and the Samhain season!

Featuring writing from (in order of appearance): 

• Danielle Hanson – “Ghosts and Mirrors,” poetry 
• Melanie Unruh – “Altar Me,” poetry
• Dawn Sperber – “Ghost Sisters,” story, with music by Hedia
• Sarah Mina Osman – “The Djinn,” story excerpt, originally published in Lunaris, issue 17, 2023
• Elsa Valmidiano – “Marmarna,” story, originally published in Mythos, Issue #7: Something Spooky, 2022
• Lisa Chavéz – “The Customary Kiss,” story

Author Bios (in order of appearance):

Danielle Hanson strives to create and facilitate wonder. She is the author of Fraying Edge of Sky and Ambushing Water. Her poetry was the basis for a puppet show at the Center for Puppetry Arts. She is Marketing Director for Sundress Publications, and serves on their Editorial Board & as Managing Editor for their imprint Doubleback Books. Previously, she has been Artist-in-Residence at Arts Beacon, Writer-in-Residence for Georgia Writers, and Poetry Editor for Doubleback Books. She teaches poetry at UC Irvine. You can read more about her at daniellejhanson.com.

Melanie Unruh has an MFA in fiction from UNM. Her writing has appeared in The Meadow, The Boiler, New Ohio Review, Post Road, Philadelphia Stories, Cutthroat, and elsewhere. She’s working on a YA novel, a short story collection, and more weird poems about bones. https://melanieunruhwriter.wordpress.com/

Dawn Sperber is the author of two new books: a poetry collection, My Bones Are Love Gifts (Shanti Arts, 2022), and a flash fiction chapbook, Now, That’s a Trick (Finishing Line Press, 2022). Her work has appeared in PANK, Daily Science Fiction, Bourbon Penn, Hunger Mountain, and elsewhere. You can follow her at dawnsperber.com.
Music included in “Ghost Sisters” is by Hedia (Bryce Hample). https://hedia.bandcamp.com/

Sarah Mina Osman's work has appeared in the Lunaris Review, Punt Volat, The Huffington Post, and SheKnows among several other publications. She likes sloths and tacos. sarahminaosmanwrites.wordpress.com

Elsa Valmidiano, an Ilocana-American essayist and poet, is the author of We Are No Longer Babaylan, her award-winning debut essay collection from New Rivers Press, which was an Editors’ Choice selection from their Many Voices Project competition in Prose. Her second essay collection, The Beginning of Leaving, is from Querencia Press. Through the examination of folklore and ritual, she blends memoir and myth, & dreams and reality, where folkloric beings reflect our defiant ancestors and ourselves. For more information, please visit her website slicingtomatoes.com.

Lisa D. Chavéz has published two books of poetry, Destruction Bay and In An Angry Season, and her poems have also appeared in Camino del Sol:  Fifteen Years of Latina and Latino Writing and other anthologies. Her essays have appeared in Arts and Letters, The Fourth Genre & other magazines, and she has had essays included in several anthologies, including The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity and An Angle of Vision: Women Writers on their Poor and Working Class Roots.

In this episode, Sam and Melanie talk with featured writer, Crystal (K.) Odelle, about  flash prose,  trans identity, the blurred lines between fiction and nonfiction, liminal spaces, chapbook publishing, RPG writing, and more!

Crystal (K.) Odelle  (they/she) is a queer trans writer, chapbooks editor at Newfound, and author of the novel Goodnight. Their flash stories have appeared in Gertrude, Passages North, Peach Mag, [PANK], Hobart, ANMLY, and elsewhere. Crystal was a Tin House Scholar and has been nominated for Best of the Net, and they write RPGs at Feverdream Games.

Links

Crystal's website

Crystal's GoFundMe

Queer Phenomenology by Sarah Ahmed

Gloria Anzaldúa

Oliver Baez Bendorf

Joy Castro

I Love Dick by Chris Kraus

Look Who's Morphing by Tom Cho

The TransLash podcast with Imara Jones

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Troubling the Line

We Want It All

In today's mini episode, we offer you a brief reprieve from the hellscape of the news in the form of a magical short story by Plume's own Dawn Sperber. "If the River Men Take You" is a lovely tale from Dawn's debut flash fiction chapbook, Now, That's a Trick, out for pre-order now from Finishing Line Books. Preorder your copy today!

We hope you enjoy the reading!

Dawn's website:

DawnSperber.com

In this episode, we’ve paired two mother-daughter writing duos to talk about how to support (and take seriously!) young writers and their creative endeavors. Sam hosts a conversation between returning-guest Jenn Ghivan and her 10-year-old daughter, Lina, and Ileisha Saunders and her 10-year-old daughter, Odyssey Miranda Mercado.

About Our Guests:

Jennifer & Adelina Ghivan

Jennifer has earned fellowships from the NEA and PEN/Rosenthal Emerging Voices, and published eleven books of poetry, fiction, and craft. Her novels have received glowing and starred reviews in Publishers' Weekly, The Washington Post, Ms. Magazine, and many others. Her honors and awards include The Southwest Book Award and Joy Harjo Poetry Prize, among many others. You can read more about Jennifer's books and what readers are saying at https://jennifergivhan.com/.  Adelina has been accepted to the San Diego School of Creative and Performing Arts program for creative writing, and she fancies herself quite the precocious scholar and adventurer. She’s just written her first novel. Both she and her mama enjoy a good haunting.

Ileisha Sanders & Odyssey Miranda Mercado

Ileisha is a mom, writer and actress. She enjoys writing plays, poetry and short stories. Odyssey Miranda is a 10-year-old writer and performer. She is an avid reader and wrote her first self-published book when she was 8 years old called The Three Little Mermaids and the Big Bad Shark (https://www.amazon.com/Three-Little-Mermaids-Big-Shark/dp/1693166445) — a re-telling of an old tale. She is currently working on her first novel Morpho Wings. Oh, and she loves pizza with extra sauce. The mother- daughter pair enjoy participating in and watching live theatre. They look forward to writing together.

In this episode, Melanie and Dawn talk with featured writer, Jessamine Chan, about her New York Times bestselling novel The School For Good Mothers, publishing your first novel after 40, writing envy, motherhood, art and social change, “unlikeable” women in fiction, and more!

Join our Patreon at the $5 Prickly Pear level for access to an upcoming bonus segment from this episode, in which Jessamine talks in more detail about her novel (with spoilers!).

CW: forced parent child separation

Jessamine Chan’s short stories have appeared in Tin House and Epoch. A former reviews editor at Publishers Weekly, she holds an MFA from Columbia University. Her work has received support from the Elizabeth George Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Wurlitzer Foundation, Jentel, the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center, the Anderson Center, VCCA, and Ragdale. Her first novel, The School for Good Mothers, is a New York Times bestseller and a Read with Jenna Today Show Book Club pick. She lives in Chicago with her husband and daughter.

Links

JessamineChan.com

“Where Is Your Mother?” by Rachel Aviv: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/12/02/where-is-your-mother

Writers to Read

ChloeCooperJones.com

CatherineChung.com

RachelJYoder.com

Learn more about Plume at PlumeforWriters.org! 

To kick off Season 3, Plumesters Sam and Dawn are turning the tables on their fellow co-host, Melanie Unruh, and talking to her about writing novels, sticking with large projects, and the founding of Plume.

We're so excited to share this new season with you all!

CW: grief and abortion

Melanie Unruh has an MFA in fiction from the University of New Mexico. Her writing has appeared in and is forthcoming in The Meadow, Two Hawks Quarterly, The Boiler, New Ohio Review, Post Road, Sixfold, Philadelphia Stories, and Cutthroat, among others. She co-founded Plume: A Writer’s Companion, a community for women and non-binary writers, which has now branched out into Plume: A Writer's Podcast.  At present, she’s working on a YA novel,  a short story collection, and some weird poems about bones. When she’s not writing or teaching, she enjoys drinking a good cup of chai, listening to audiobooks, smashing the patriarchy, and spending time with her kids. Visit her website to learn more.

We can’t believe we’ve just completed the second season of our podcast. We have enjoyed this beautiful, encouraging, supportive ride, and are excited to offer up our season 2 finale.

In this episode, we’ll break from our usual roundtable format. We thought, what better way is there to end the year than to include in this final episode as many voices from our Plume community as possible? The result is a beautiful range of poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction from 15 of this season’s featured writers, roundtable participants, and members of our Plume community. This time of year is one for reflection and gratitude, and we are beyond thankful for how this wonderful community has continued to come together and grow in 2021. 

We hope you enjoy it, and we look forward to bringing you new episodes next year!

CW: sexual assault, death, grief, suicide, cutting, mental illness, Covid-19 

Writers sharing their work, in order of appearance (reverse alphabetical order):

• Elsa Valmadiano – “Diwata” (poetry), originally appeared in NOMBONO: An Anthology of Speculative Poetry by BIPOC Creators
• Melanie Unruh – excerpt from essay-in-progress titled “Natalie” (nonfiction)
• Samantha Tetangco – excerpt from the novel-in-progress titled Bug (fiction)
• Cynthia Sylvester - “The Monsters of Cherry Street.” (fiction), originally appeared in ABQ in Print
• Dawn Sperber – “Inoculation” (fiction), originally appeared in Daily Science Fiction (https://dailysciencefiction.com/science-fiction/biotech/dawn-sperber/inoculation) 
• Suzanne Richardson – “I Was Thinking About the Ocean” (poetry), originally appeared in dialogist (https://dialogist.org/poetry/2021-week-35-suzanne-richardson )
• Rhea Ramakrishnan – “One Line Play” (poetry)
• Cynthia Patton – “House of Sea and Sky” (poetry)
• Cassie McClure – “To See It All” (nonfiction), originally appeared in McClure’s column, My So-Called Millenial Life (https://www.creators.com/features/my-so-called-millennial-life) 
• Nari Kirk – “Jenn” (nonfiction), originally appeared in October 2021’s Digital Plume.
• Julia Halprin Jackson – “Soloist” originally appeared in Fiction 365 (http://www.fiction365.com/2013/03/soloist/) (fiction)
• Brenna Gomez – Excerpt from “Sienna” (fiction) 
• Jameela F. Dallis – ekphrastic poems “What is Holy,” “A Tangle of Desire,” & “Clay Lungs Obscure Intimacy” (poetry) 
• Marlena Chertock – “Dayenu, Hebrew for ‘It would have been enough’,” “Where the Quiet Queers Are,” which was originally shown in a gallery in Brussels called Lesbian Now, & “Nasty Beauty,” which originally appeared in Lesbians are Miracles Magazine (poetry) 
• Arlaina Ash – excerpt from hermit crab essay, “Annotating the DSM 5 Entry on Schizoaffective Disorder” (nonfiction)

In this episode, Melanie and Dawn talk with November featured writer, Kendra Tuthill, about self-publishing; writing through grief; setting small, timed writing goals, and more. Plus, Kendra reads her thought-provoking letter of encouragement, which explores the effects of writers losing their attention spans in the age of social media.

Join our Patreon at the $5 Prickly Pear level for access to an upcoming bonus segment from this episode, in which Kendra talks in more detail about the excerpt from her novel Stitches. You'll also receive a copy of November's Digital Plume, which includes both Kendra's letter and her tour-de-force novel excerpt.

CW: suicide, assault, grief

Kendra Tuthill holds an MA in Fiction Writing from Portland State University.  She has won several awards for her plays and screenplays, most notably landing a semi-finalist position in Francis Ford Coppola's American Zoetrope Screenwriting Contest for her dark, superhero screenplay titled Kendar the Destroyer.  She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico where she works in the Art Department on independent features and studio shows such as Making a Killing and Better Call Saul.  To pass time between productions, she writes dystopian screenplays and dramatic novels.

In this episode, we talk with three writers who identify with Pagan traditions or as witches. We focus on how magic influences their writing, how they move through the world with this belief system and identity, how to ethically incorporate magic and spirituality into writing, and more.

CW: child loss, sexual assault, and religious intolerance

Jenn's website

Britt's website

Dawn's website

In this episode, Sam and Melanie talk with October featured writer, Nari Kirk, about her writing process, poetic influences on her prose, MFA reflections, writing about grief, and more. Plus, Nari reads her engaging letter of encouragement, which explores the ways in which we often try to force writing into a work ethic.

Join our Patreon at the $5 Prickly Pear level for access to an upcoming bonus segment from this episode, in which Nari talks about her trajectory as a writer. You'll also receive a copy of October's Digital Plume, which includes both Nari's letter and a delicious flight of her flash nonfiction work.

Nari Kirk is a Korean American writer with an MFA in creative nonfiction from the University of New Mexico. Her work has appeared in Hobart online and the anthology All the Women in My Family Sing, among other publications. She lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Links

The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

The Catalogue of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

“Leap” by Brian Doyle

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Writers to Read

Obit by Victoria Chang 

Tiana Nobile