Politics and Prose Presents

The stories in Origin Stories take as their subject the sources of love, marriage, motherhood, friendship, artistic ambition, restiveness, and shame. Their characters perceive more than they can explain, want more than they can have, and contend with the bounty and frugality of their relationships. In "This Isn't the Actual Sea," a woman considers that her friend's failure and sudden success have given her the material she needs to write something of her own, if she's willing to risk the friendship to do so. "The Artist's Wife" describes, in a painting stowed in a bowling alley broom closet, the chasm between seeing and being seen. "Dogwood" is a piece of lyric reportage on beauty, family, and survival whose sections range from the narrator's childhood to her son's new adulthood. And "Origin Story" acts as an accounting of the many different states where a woman and her husband have lived, and what it is they've been searching for.

In this keen, meditative collection set in Southern California and Virginia, Corinna Vallianatos dramatizes the bonds of mother and child, the self-destruction of young womanhood, the thrill and bewilderment of friendship, and the power of place.

Origin Stories is filled with humor, longing, beauty, and belief.

Corinna Vallianatos is the author of The Beforeland and My Escapee, winner of the Grace Paley Prize for Short Fiction. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories 2023, McSweeney's, and elsewhere. She lives in California and Virginia.

Cece is in love. She has arrived early at her future in-laws' lake house in Salish, Montana, to finish planning her wedding to Charlie, a young doctor with a brilliant life ahead of him. Charlie has asked Garrett, his best friend from college, to officiate the ceremony, though Cece can't imagine anyone more ill-suited for the task--an airport baggage handler haunted by a tragedy from his and Charlie's shared past. But as Cece spends time with Garrett, his gruff mask slips, and she grows increasingly uncertain about her future. And why does Garrett, after meeting Cece, begin to feel, well, human again? As a contagious stomach flu threatens to scuttle the wedding, and Charlie and Garrett's friendship is put to the ultimate test, Cece must decide between the life she's dreamed of and a life she's never imagined.

The events of that summer have long-lasting repercussions, not only on the three friends caught in its shadow but also on their children, who struggle to escape their parents' story. Spanning fifty years and set against the backdrop of a rapidly warming Montana, Dream State explores what it means to live with the mistakes of the past--both our own and the ones we've inherited.

Written with humor, precision, and enormous heart, both a love letter and an elegy to the American West, Dream State is a thrillingly ambitious ode to the power of friendship, the weird weather of marriage, and the beauty of impermanence.

Eric Puchner is the author of the story collection Music Through the Floor, a finalist for the New York Public Library's Young Lions Fiction Award; the novel Model Home, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award in Fiction; and a second short story collection, Last Day on Earth. His short stories and personal essays have appeared in GQ, Granta, Tin House, Best American Short Stories, and more. He has received an Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is an associate professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University and lives in Baltimore with his wife, the novelist Katharine Noel, and their two children.

PURCHASE BOOKS HERE: https://politics-prose.com/vallianatos-puchner

*recorded 4/25/2025

Elon Musk has cast himself as the savior of humanity, an altruistic force whose fortune is tied to noble pursuits from halting our dependence on fossil fuels to colonizing Mars. Once frequently heralded as a modern-day Edison, Musk has taken up a new place in the public consciousness with his growing desire to disrupt not just the automotive and space industries but the policies that shape our nation, placing him at the center of America's most complex undertakings in manufacturing, politics, and defense and technology, even as his increasingly erratic personal behavior has raised questions about his stability and judgement.

Musk famously leads his companies from a bully pulpit, eroding guardrails and cutting through red tape whenever possible with little regard for the fallout as long as it serves his larger goals. Many in his orbit have seen their lives upended or their careers throttled by believing in his utopian vision. As the scale of the wagers he makes with his fortune and concerns about his credibility have grown in recent years, he alternately seems to be in complete command or on the verge of a meltdown. Yet in the long run, he has only become wealthier, and now the stakes have risen. Thanks to astute political maneuvering, Musk is no longer limited to gambling with a company's bottom line or the livelihoods of his workers; he is poised to apply his uncompromising approach to business to the foundational rules and regulations that hold our society together.

At a moment when America's tech gods are more influential than ever, Hubris Maximus is a cautionary tale about the pitfalls of lionizing magnetic leaders. Washington Post journalist Faiz Siddiqui offers a gripping, detailed portrait of a singularly messy and lucrative period in Musk's career, as well as a case study in the power of using one's platform to shape the public narrative in a world that can't turn away from its screens.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781250327178?ic_referral=aUlJ7akAFPxUKm_gzVRjQDuqKt4SZ32bpqo7-_YHe9MwM_ixwaEyTVys7GAS6GqpS9nA3tvmjVgTWzk8GhRMI4sT2deO2wblGPkMyF0uKdlK0YOwFJpDIcxCUoyW9WnSKBbXD_Q

Faiz Siddiqui is a technology journalist who writes for the Washington Post and has covered companies such as Tesla, Uber and Twitter (now X) for the Business Desk. His reporting has focused on transportation, social media and government transformation, among other issues. His work has been recognized by the Society for Advancing Business Editing and Writing and he has earned multiple Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence and Hearst Journalism awards. His writing has also appeared in the Boston Globe and NPR.

Siddiqui is in conversation with Noel King. King is the co-host and editorial director of Today, Explained. Before joining Vox, she was a host of NPR’s flagship radio show Morning Edition and the popular news podcast Up First. She was a frequent part of the network’s live election coverage during the turbulent years of 2017–2021. Before joining Morning Edition, Noel was an economics reporter for six years, at Planet Money and Marketplace. Noel began her career overseas, living and working in the Middle East and Africa. Between 2004 and 2013, she covered the Arab Spring as well as conflicts in Darfur, South Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo. In 2020, the Radio Hall of Fame honored her with their One to Watch award — though she’s fine if you just prefer to listen.

*recorded 4/24/2025

From prominent critic and biographer Blake Gopnik comes a compelling new portrait of America's first great collector of modern art, Albert Coombs Barnes. Raised in a Philadelphia slum shortly after the Civil War, Barnes rose to earn a medical degree and then made a fortune from a pioneering antiseptic treatment for newborns. Never losing sight of the working-class neighbors of his youth, Barnes became a ruthless advocate for their rights and needs. His vast art collection--180 Renoirs, 67 Cézannes, 59 Matisses, 45 Picassos--was dedicated to enriching their cultural lives. A miner was more likely to get access than a mine owner.

Gopnik's meticulous research reveals Barnes as a fierce advocate for the egalitarian ideals of his era's progressive movement. But while his friends in the movement worked to reshape American society, Barnes wanted to transform the nation's aesthetic life, taking art out of the hands of the elite and making it available to the average American.

The Maverick's Museum offers a vivid picture of one of America's great eccentrics. The sheer ferocity of Barnes's democratic ambitions left him with more enemies than allies among people of all classes, but for a circle of intimates, he was a model of intelligence, generosity, and loyalty. In this compelling portrait, Gopnik reveals a life shaped by contradictions, one that left a lasting impact.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780063284036?ic_referral=9feaSY_N9wxD1gR0VGkaSyxDthz9Hyxy1uiMjvSQ_VMwMxSZRfn1c6am8pJcG8SDME-jnBDLIdlew-Z6poHMJxpCXbJHl4emmxcv0SDq-_HDVUEwcO5AuhZQjuRdqqVlPlH4gg

Blake Gopnik, one of North America's leading art critics, is the author of the comprehensive biography Warhol. He has served as the art and design critic at Newsweek, and as the chief art critic at the Washington Post and Canada's the Globe and Mail. In 2017, he was a Cullman Center fellow in residence at the New York Public Library, and in 2015 he held a fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography at the City University of New York. He has a PhD in art history from Oxford University and is a regular contributor to the New York Times.

Gopnik is in conversation with Robin Givhan. Givhan is Washington Post senior critic-at-large writing about politics, race and the arts. Previously, she covered the fashion industry as a business, as a cultural institution and as pure pleasure. She is the 2006 Pulitzer Prize winner for criticism and author of “The Battle of Versailles: The Night American Fashion Stumbled into the Spotlight and Made History.” In addition to The Post, Givhan has worked at Newsweek/Daily Beast, Vogue magazine and the Detroit Free Press. During her most recent tenure at The Post, in addition to fashion, Givhan covered Michelle Obama during the first year of the administration.

*recorded 4/24/2025

In The Age of the Borderlands, acclaimed historian Andrew C. Isenberg offers a new history of manifest destiny that breaks from triumphalist narratives of US territorial expansion. Isenberg takes readers to the contested borders of Spanish Florida, Missouri, New Mexico, California, Texas, and Minnesota at critical moments in the early to mid-nineteenth century, demonstrating that the architects of American expansion faced significant challenges from the diverse groups of people inhabiting each region. In other words, while the manifest destiny paradigm begins with an assumption of US strength, the government and the agents it dispatched to settle and control the frontier had only a weak presence. 
Tracing the interconnected histories of Indians, slaves, antislavery reformers, missionaries, federal agents, and physicians, Isenberg shows that the United States was repeatedly forced to accommodate the presence of other colonial empires and powerful Indigenous societies. Anti-expansionists in the borderlands welcomed the precarity of the government's power: The land on which they dwelled was a grand laboratory where they could experiment with their alternative visions for American society. Examining the borderlands offers an understanding not just about frontier spaces but about the nature of the early American state--ambitiously expansionist but challenged by its native and imperial competitors.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781469685052?ic_referral=FOZq4jhEdb1VxLHXNSprsjEtCRVbiIL53EAveYBOW64wM5lNX8M6cohTDZv9bcWsUYH3ko4Syet3_ByeYm6efiXXtaIG-G5vnNqdqG9zmPrQ-u9kFOACaAfI-siDGYPn6yFsmg

Andrew C. Isenberg is the Hall Distinguished Professor of American History at the University of Kansas.

*recorded 4/23/2025

Are you going through a period in your life when things feel "off"? Do you struggle to find joy in happy moments? Are you walking around feeling numb? Do you feel restless when you aren't busy or empty when you are sitting still? We all know what can't-get-out-of-bed depression looks like. But there's another, lesser-known side of depression that is hidden.

Those of us with High-Functioning Depression (HFD) usually don't act the way we think a depressed person might. On the surface, we seem fine: We are succeeding at work, pulling our weight at home, and carrying on with our typical social life. Yet behind that mask of productivity we are barely surviving, and certainly not thriving. And we may have no idea why, or what to do about it.

In High Functioning, Dr. Judith Joseph draws on original research, client cases, and her own personal struggles with HFD to demystify this poorly understood condition. Her five simple tools--the Five V's--will help you understand the science of your happiness and empower you to reclaim your life and joy.

-Validation: Acknowledge and accept your emotions about past traumas and present pain

-Venting: Let out the frustrations and anxious energy bottled up inside

-Values: Identify the purpose and priorities that matter most

-Vitals: Slow down to listen to your brain and body and monitor the six vital signs of emotional functioning

-Vision: Plan for and celebrate successes, milestones, and everyday joy

By following the Five V's, we can put an end to self-sacrificing and self-sabotaging, calm our inner turmoil, and go from merely functioning to truly living.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780316577298?ic_referral=E1F1CIW3qdSrY4kRInBHLyn8Hpt2T2T3GWELMiW4q1IwM_X3OoA7hg-1h0NZqnvF4e5N2mBAo8od28QMmc5JjRhnEBaHCMGxGuPqjC7FVqV7U9DpPy-8MTMtgH3JxwVxVi7WHI8

Judith Joseph MD, MBA, is a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and researcher who specializes in mental health and trauma. She is the founder of and chief investigator at Manhattan Behavioral Medicine, New York City's premier clinical research site, a clinical assistant professor in child and adolescent psychiatry at NYU Langone Medical Center in Manhattan, and chairwoman of the Women in Medicine Board at Columbia University's Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons.

As one of social media's favorite psychiatrists, Dr. Judith gets over 15 million views a month. Her Instagram, full of funny, role-playing videos and revealing insights, got more than 10 million impressions and her TikToks were viewed more than 5 million times just last month alone. She holds an undergraduate degree from Duke as well as a medical doctorate and master's in business administration from Columbia.

Dr. Joseph is in conversation with Glory Edim. Edim is a literary tastemaker, entrepreneur, and advocate for diverse voices in literature. In 2015, she founded Well-Read Black Girl (WRBG), an online platform and book club dedicated to celebrating the works of Black women authors and creating a supportive online community for readers. Under Edim's leadership, WRBG has grown into a nonprofit organization, hosting events, book festivals, and author conversations that highlight the richness and diversity of Black literature. Her efforts have earned her accolades such as the 2017 Innovator's Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and the Madam C.J. Walker Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. As an author herself, Edim has contributed to the literary landscape with her bestselling anthologies Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves , and On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library.

The conversation is moderated by Talia Cadet. Cadet is a content creator and influencer with an audience of over 230,000 across social media platforms. Her DC, book and Black-owned business videos have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone and ESSENCE.

*recorded 4/21/2025

Robert Crumb is often credited with single-handedly transforming the comics medium into a place for adult expression, in the process pioneering the underground comic book industry, and transforming the vernacular language of 20th-century America into an instantly recognizable and popular aesthetic, as iconic as Walt Disney or Charles Schulz. Now, for the first time, Dan Nadel, a curator and writer specializing in comics and art, shares how this complicated artist survived childhood abuse, fame in his twenties, more fame, and came out the other side intact.

More than just a biography of an iconic cartoonist, Crumb is the story of a richly complex life at the forefront of both the underground and popular cultures of post-war America. Including forty-five stunning black-and-white images throughout and a sixteen-page color insert featuring images both iconic and obscure, Crumb spans the pressures of 1950s suburban America and Crumb's highly dysfunctional early family life; the history of comics and graphic satire; 20th century popular music; the world of the counterculture; the birth of underground comic books in 1960s San Francisco with Crumb's Zap Comix; the economic challenges and dissolution of the hippie dream; and the path Robert Crumb blazed through it all.

Written with Crumb's cooperation, this fascinating, rollicking book takes in seven decades of Crumb's iconic works, including Fritz the Cat, Weirdo, and his final book-length comic of The Book of Genesis; capturing, in the process, the essence of an extraordinary artist and his times.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781982144005?ic_referral=5o6S89XqTpEIW1481Eci0pk-AgCb9viTn3Z6HtfTL9gwM8-DDOb-YbtM47UcPMwNZyjOZH6F-Mwkrj0suAIBevnDtibtKDtHgNHRdInqYGUgp1Nsmmd6od4ZKyJGR3NBaA_VMg

Dan Nadel is a writer and curator. His previous books include, It's Life as a I See It: Black Cartoonists in Chicago, 1940-1980; Peter Saul: Professional Artist Correspondence, 1945-1976; and Art Out of Time: Unknown Comic Visionaries, 1900-1969. Nadel has curated exhibitions for galleries and museums internationally including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, UC Davis, and the Whitney Museum of American Art. He is the founder of PictureBox, a publishing and packaging company that produced over one hundred books, objects, and zines from 2000 to 2014, including the Grammy Award-winning design for Wilco's 2004 album A Ghost Is Born. Dan is the curator-at-large for the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art. He lives in Brooklyn, New York, with his family.

*recorded 4/16/2025

At his desk one day, prominent Washington commentator Adam Zweig receives a text message. "Btw want to give you a heads-up abt some breaking news," it reads. "Call soonest." These are the early rumblings of an eventual media storm generated by small-town reporter Valerie Iovine, who has gone public with her account of sexual harassment at the hands of esteemed editor and liberal icon Max Lieberthol. Twenty years have passed since the incident, and though Adam wasn't directly involved, he quickly finds himself implicated and entangled, his career under imminent threat.

Adam has never forgotten his history with Valerie: as former colleagues, their workplace collaboration had gradually tipped into a mutual romantic attraction. Or so he believed. Confronted by the claims against his former boss and a growing awareness of rampant sexism in his industry, Adam, who had always thought of himself as progressive, is forced to challenge his own assumptions over the years. What once seemed incidental becomes sinister; what once seemed like a blundering encounter helped derail a young woman's promising career.

Sly and ironic, A Hole in the Story explores one imperfect man's dilemmas as he tries to keep his feet in a shifting moral landscape.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781571315755?ic_referral=UpfLWuaFaZ8OarA94NTWKXEqxkCH9CuV2hxLBXSKm20wMzIujD-cJCzjWUB7ISxTreJb0JYlWgGZ6K-029cJYGKJoMhCXhjfVyJO1BMRIMsNb5AefxH8T_x9zq8aF1RgEJq5pg

Ken Kalfus has been a finalist for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award, and he has received a Pew Fellowship in the Arts and a fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He is the author of four novels, including 2 A.M. in Little America and Equilateral, and has published three short story collections. He has written for the New York Times, Harper's, the New Yorker, and the New York Review of Books and his books have been translated into more than ten foreign languages. Born in New York, Kalfus currently resides in Philadelphia.

*recorded 4/16/2025

For the doomed stand American forces made in the Philippines at the start of World War II, two generals received their country's highest military award, the Medal of Honor. One was the charismatic and controversial Douglas MacArthur, whose orders forced him to leave his soldiers on the islands to starvation and surrender but whose vow to return echoed around the globe. The other was the gritty Jonathan Mayhew Wainwright, who became a hero to the troops whose fate he insisted on sharing even when it meant becoming the highest-ranking American prisoner of the Japanese.

In The Fate of the Generals, bestselling author Jonathan Horn brings together the story of two men who received the same medal but found honor on very different paths. MacArthur's journey would require a daring escape with his wife and young child to Australia and then years of fighting over the thousands of miles needed to make it back to the Philippines, where he would fulfill his famous vow only to see the city he called home burn. Wainwright's journey would take him from the Philippines to Taiwan and Manchuria as his captors tortured him in prisons and left him to wonder whether his countrymen would ever understand the choice he had made to surrender for the sake of his men.

A story of war made personal based on meticulous research into diaries and letters including boxes of previously unexplored papers, The Fate of the Generals is a vivid account that raises timely questions about how we define honor and how we choose our heroes, and is destined to become a classic of World War II history.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781668010075?ic_referral=Ot97HQBkhuLfTNnf90tkpmcr6ev9dMj450CFayF-MeEwM2vucLAi5HixodpupTDzd0cJA-TT3zFBqnunP1Xhk1-CkgY5AL3tC9GTuFTR1ja03MiDrCJIrq-AlXKu8Kr3ris7Ioc

Jonathan Horn is an author and former White House presidential speechwriter whose books include Washington's End and the Robert E. Lee biography The Man Who Would Not Be Washington, which was a Washington Post bestseller. He has written for outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times Disunion series, New York Post, The Daily Beast, National Review, and POLITICO, and has appeared on CBS Sunday Morning, CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, and PBS NewsHour. A graduate of Yale, he lives in Bethesda, Maryland, with his wife, two children, and dog.

*recorded 4/15/2025

The Great Migration of African Americans from the South to northern and western cities between 1915 and 1970 fundamentally altered the political, social, and cultural landscapes of major cities like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Detroit, and changed the country as well. By the late twentieth century, Black people were mayors, police chiefs, and school superintendents, at parity or overrepresented in municipal jobs in these and other cities, which were also hubs for Black literature, music, film, and politics. 
Since the 1970s, migration patterns have significantly shifted away from the major urban centers of the Great Migration, leaving some iconic Black communities replaced by mostly non-Black residents. Though many books have examined Black urban experiences in America, this is the first written by historians focusing on the post-Great Migration era. It is centered on numerous facets of Black life, including popular culture, policing, suburbanization, and political organizing across multiple cities. In this landmark volume, Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar and his contributors explore the last half century of African American urban history, covering a landscape transformed since the end of the Great Migration and demonstrating how cities remain dynamic into the twenty-first century.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9781469684345?ic_referral=cNNzGQfxTaqyHKWABxKCT7Skg4r0IDlFcNX3Rmow_CEwM2qFCrZfUCjT55mucTc_aM8lsVaKZ7sFalfIlQXx6AP32wVXhcUsZ4odG2fsU6ZU0lXgFZD3MG9scxvr3SCSLD6tFQ

Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar is professor of history at University of Connecticut.

Ogbar is in conversation with Frederick Knight, Ph.D. Knight is chair of the history department at Howard University and specializes in African American and African Diaspora history. He is the author of Working the Diaspora:  The Impact of African Labor on the Anglo-American World, 1650-1850 (NYU Press, 2010) and Black Elders: The Meaning of Age in American Slavery and Freedom (Penn Press, 2024) .

*recorded 4/14/2025

This event is in partnership with Solas Nua.

Set in a remote village in the north of England, Open, Heaven unfolds over the course of one year in which two teenage boys meet and transform each other's lives.

James --a sheltered, shy sixteen-year-old --is alone in his newly discovered sexuality, full of an unruly desire but entirely inexperienced. As he is beginning to understand himself and his longings, he also realizes how his feelings threaten to separate him from his family and the rural community he has grown up in. He dreams of another life, fantasizing about what lies beyond the village's leaf-ribboned boundaries, beyond his reach: autonomy, tenderness, sex. Then, in the autumn of 2002, he meets Luke, a slightly older boy, handsome, unkempt, who comes with a reputation for danger. Abandoned by his parents --his father imprisoned, and his mother having moved to France for another man --Luke has been sent to live with his aunt and uncle on their farm just outside the village. James is immediately drawn to him "like the pull a fire makes on the air, dragging things into it and blazing them into its hot, white centre," drawn to this boy who is beautiful and impulsive, charismatic, troubled. But underneath Luke's bravado is a deep wound --a longing for the love of his father and for the stability of family life.

Open, Heaven is a novel about desire, yearning, and the terror of first love. With the striking economy and lyricism that animate his work as a poet, Hewitt has written a mesmerizing hymn to boyhood, sensuality, and love in all its forms. A truly exceptional debut.

PURCHASE BOOK HERE: https://politics-prose.com/book/9780593802847?ic_referral=L-AdzwB8wIw-UK64kF_6AhO8zEZOhiVpbN-DlHIPtlUwMxAzvd1ji-FncsUt2i_xn_ojFala6MXZrBAgf1VmZqUfghyX9UOXElGw5G3VXJiQOtVrwlD-nENaU_mvHffVW14SZQ

Seán Hewitt's debut collection of poetry, Tongues of Fire, won the Laurel Prize in 2021, and was shortlisted for The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award, the John Pollard Foundation International Poetry Prize, and a Dalkey Literary Award. In 2020, he was chosen by The Sunday Times (London) as one of their "30 under 30" artists in Ireland. His memoir, All Down Darkness Wide, is published by Jonathan Cape in the UK and Penguin Press in the United States (2022). It was shortlisted for Biography of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards, for the Foyles Book of the Year in nonfiction, for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, and for a LAMBDA award, and won the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature in 2022. Hewitt is assistant professor in literary practice at Trinity College Dublin, and is a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Hewitt is in conversation with Andrew Dolan. Dolan is the Executive Director of Solas Nua, Washington D.C.'s leading Irish Arts organization. Andrew is an accomplished multidisciplinary performance artist and producer whose work has premiered in the U.S. and Ireland. He has been a guest artist at Fairfield University and Century College, and has worked with Teatr Biuro Podrozy, Rude Mechs, Town Hall Theatre, Red Eye Theater, Sandbox Theater, Six Points Theater, The Playwrights' Center, and many others. As an arts leader, he previously served as a Co-Artistic Director at Red Eye Theater, Associate Director of Development for The Cowles Center for Dance & the Performing Arts, and Venue Manager for Bedlam Lowertown. Across these organizations, he's co-produced/co-presented 250+ theater and dance productions, concerts, and special events. He graduated with an MA in Performance from the University of Galway, and holds an MFA in Directing and Public Dialogue from Virginia Tech.

*recorded 4/13/2025