by Jay Rodriguez Sierra

[link to transcript]

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December 4, 2025, December 18, 20025

Please enjoy this rewind during our holiday production break.

Remix Volume 6 by Jay Rodriguez Sierra features Q.R. Hand jr., Martha Cinader, Genny Lim, Meredith Leigh, Donna Janell Bowman, Dorsía Smith Silva, Mary Oishi, Kellie Richardson, Eileen Tabios, Ozier Muhammad, Tony Robles, Megan Marshall, Kim McMillon and Alice Walker reads Zora Neal Hurston.

CREDITS– HOSTS: Martha Cinader, Tony Robles. FEATURED GUESTS:Q.R. Hand jr., Martha Cinader, Genny Lim, Meredith Leigh, Donna Janell Bowman, Dorsía Smith Silva, Mary Oishi, Kellie Richardson, Eileen Tabios, Ozier Muhammad, Tony Robles, Megan Marshall, Kim McMillon, Alice Walker reads Zora Neal Hurston. ORIGNAL SOUNDTRACK, MIXING, MASTERING, SOUND DESIGN: Jay Rodriguez Sierra.

Alice Walker is an internationally celebrated writer, poet and activist whose books include seven novels, four collections of short stories, four children’s books, and volumes of essays and poetry.  She won the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction in 1983 and the National Book Award.

Donna Janell Bowman is an award-winning author of books for young readers, including Wings of an Eagle: The Gold Medal Dreams of Billy Mills, co-authored with Olympian Billy Mills and illustrated by S.D. Nelson; Step Right Up: How Doc and Jim Key Taught the World About Kindness, illustrated by Daniel Minter; Abraham Lincoln’s Dueling Words,…

Dorsía Smith Silva is the author of In Inheritance of Drowning (CavanKerry, 2024), which was a finalist for the Whirling Prize and reviewed by Publishers Weekly. She is a multi-nominated Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Cave Canem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Poetry Editor at The Hopper, and Professor of…

Dr. Kim McMillon, a producer and playwright, has multiple notable works including the anthology Some Other Blues and Black Fire—This Time. She created the one-woman show Confessions of a Thespian and directed Voyages, both showcased at various theaters. Additionally, her essay “Ancestor as Refugee” was published in the SAGE Encyclopedia of Refugee Studies.

Eileen R. Tabios has released collections of poetry, fiction, art, essays, and experimental writings from publishers around the world. Recent releases include her second novel The Balikbayan Artist; an autobiography, THE INVENTOR; a poetry collection Because I Love You, I Become War; an art monograph, Drawing the Six Directions; a flash fiction collection (in collaboration…

Genny Lim is an American poet, playwright, and performer. She is the ninth poet laureate of San Francisco, California, and the first Chinese American in the role.She was the Chair of Community Arts and Education Committee, and Chair of the Advisory Board for the San Francisco Writers Corps.

Kellie Richardson is a writer, artist, and educator born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. Kellie’s work primarily explores themes of love, loss and longing, with particular attention to how those themes intersect with Black American humanity. Kellie’s relationship with art is defined by the metamorphosis that happens when art is a liberatory practice.

Dr. Kim McMillon, a producer and playwright, has contributed to various anthologies, including Some Other Blues and Black Fire—This Time. Her notable works include the one-woman show Confessions of a Thespian and the play Voyages. She also authored the essay “Ancestor as Refugee” for the SAGE Encyclopedia of Refugee Studies.

Martha Cinader is a poet and author living in Harlem, NY. Her young adult novel, Marq and the Queen Fish, is forthcoming in 2026 from Atmosphere Press. Cinader is the founder and Director of the Listen & Be Heard Network, where she hosts and produces The Listen & Be Heard Hour, and Beyond Borders, both non-commercial podcasts and syndicated radio shows…

Mary Oishi was the child of an American soldier and a Japanese bride from World War II. She grew up with her father’s relatives in a white supremacist enclave in rural Pennsylvania until finally reuniting with her mother in 1987. Since arriving in Albuquerque in 1999, she has performed and published poetry “in the spirit…

Megan Marshall is the author of the Pulitzer Prize–winning Margaret Fuller: A New American Life as well as Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast and The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, a Pulitzer Prize finalist.

Ozier Muhammad graduated with a B.A., in photography from Columbia College in Chicago. He has been a photojournalist for more than 3 decades. His first job was as a staff photographer at Ebony Magazine. Ozier joined The Charlotte Observer in 1978, went to Newsday in 1980 and has been at the New York Times since…

Quentin Roosevelt Hand, Jr. (1937 – December 31, 2020), known professionally as Q.R. Hand, was an African-American poet. Q. R. Hand, Jr. was born in Brooklyn, New York. He is the author of three poetry books, i speak to the poet in man (jukebox press, 1985), how sweet it is (Zeitgeist Press, 1996), and whose really blues, new & selected poems (Taurean…

Tony Robles, “The People’s Poet” was born in San Francisco and is the nephew of Filipino-American poet, historian and social justice activist Al Robles. He was a shortlist nominee for poet laureate of San Francisco in 2017 and the recipient of the San Francisco Art Commission individual literary artist grant in 2018. His two books…

I remember the very day that I became colored. Up to my thirteenth year I lived in the little Negro town of Eatonville, Florida. It is exclusively a colored town. The only white people I knew passed through the town going to or coming from Orlando.

This autobiographical retelling of Billy Mills’ journeys from being an orphan on Oglala Lakota Pine Ridge Reservation to his Gold Medal Win in the 10,000-meter race of the 1964 Toyoko Olympics. Inspired by this father’s words “the pursuit of a dream will heal you”, Billy was able to overcome poverty, racism, and severe health challenges to reach his goal and heal his heart.  

Long before he was our beloved 16th president, Abraham Lincoln was known for his smarts and his knee-slapping humor. In 1842, his humorous writing style got him into a heap of trouble. When he clashed with his political rival, James Shields, Lincoln came up with a rascally mudslinging plan.

The 19th century was a brutal time for animals, but William “Doc” Key, a formerly-enslaved, self-taught veterinarian and entrepreneur, believed that kindness was more powerful than cruelty. He determined to prove it by using only kindness and patience to “educate” a once-sickly and crooked-legged colt born in 1889.

In this striking debut, Dorsía Smith Silva explores the devastating effects of Hurricane María in Puerto Rico, highlighting the natural world, the lasting impact of hurricanes, and the marginalization of Puerto Ricans. These poems also focus on the multiple sites of oppression in the United States, especially the racial, social, and political injustices that occur…

A collection of biographical stories and poems about fascinating people in history whose real dreams made a real difference. Developed in performance, these stories bring old tales to life for contemporary readers in a way that is both entertaining and informative.

The Balikbayan Artist– inspired by and dedicated to Venancio C. Igarta (1912- 2000), the real-life leading artist of the Manong Generation–

Eileen R. Tabios says, “Poetry is a decolonized language.” She proves it through her autobiography that begins with her first book that she wrote as a 2-3-year-old toddler and focuses on her poetry inventions: the hay(na)ku, the Murder Death Resurrection Poetry Generator, and the Flooid. This is a unique and thought-provoking autobiography by a poet…

These pages are filled with grieving and making sense of a mother’s loss of a child as the world once again finds itself in a state of war. In 2001, Genny Lim’s daughter, Danielle Mai Ting Jue, died at the age of 19.

In the early twentieth century, most Chinese immigrants coming to the United States were detained at the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay. There, they were subject to physical exams, interrogations, and often long detentions aimed at upholding the exclusion laws that kept Chinese out of the country.

The Art of Naming My Pain, 2nd Edition, features a new preface by artist and poet Kellie Richardson, as well as new artwork on the interior and exterior of the book. These new components root us in a deeper understanding, and witnessing, of Richardson’s lived experiences. In an era of highly curated personas and unrealistic…

Written by the “pandemic poet laureate” of Albuquerque, Sidewalk Cruiseship draws on Oishi’s remarkable ability to illustrate the world around her and the people in it. Separated into eleven short sections by traditional Japanese tankas, the poems in Oishi’s newest collection take on the macro and the micro. They respond to the pandemic, the war in Ukraine,…

In each of six essays, Marshall reinvents the personal essay form, as a portal to the past and its lessons for living into the future. The book’s brilliant, assured interplay between memoir and biography places surprising characters on the page, including the twelfth-century Buddhist hermit Kamo no Chomei, a reassuring spiritual presence for Marshall during several…

Ethical Meat is meat from an animal that had a good life, a good death, a good butcher, and a good cook. Ethical Meat is a movement that seeks to repair entire regional meat supply chains, and much work is underway by brave hardworking farmers, butchers, processors, chefs and cooks. Working to create the capacity…

Living It! is Martha Cinader’s debut as the producer of her own album, and features an eclectic array of arrangements and musical styles. It was recorded in part in a studio in New York City, part in a studio in Hamburg, and part live at the Mojo Club in Hamburg, throw in some bonus tracks…

From the world’s leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees, their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest–a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery. “A vivid and compelling memoir of [Simard’s] lifelong quest to prove that the forest is more than just a collection of trees” – The New…

In Thrift Store Metamorphosis, Tony Robles astutely demonstrates the palpable currency of human interactions. His keen observations show us the necessity of reflection. In this mirror, we learn that everything and anything that we pay attention to has the capability to hold deep meaningful lessons for us and our lives. Robles makes us feel a range of…

In this remarkable collection, Tony Robles transforms a bright-lit warehouse into a psychic landscape to illuminate one man’s efforts to reassemble a broken life. Where the Warehouse Things Are gives the satisfaction of a book of poetry as well as a novelistic sense of a place and its inhabitants fully rendered. — Ron Rash, author…

This book is a vessel/holding liquid for thirsty desirers/in the empty spiral of the universe/where detail is opinion/one moment is all it takes to answer/when the body calls. This book is just one answer in a life of calling. The storyteller lives inside the breath of home. Whatever home is chosen, whatever breath is owned.…

Zora Neale Hurston brings us Black America’s folklore as only she can, putting the oral history on the written page with grace and understanding. This new edition of Mules and Men features a new cover and a P.S. section which includes insights, interviews, and more.

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PEN America reported ‘While the movement to ban books is driven by a vocal minority demanding censorship, a 2022 poll conducted by The American Library Association found that over 70% of parents oppose book banning leaving many public school districts in a bind.  We invite you to share your voice on the banning of books in schools and libraries in the USA. 

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