Justice Malala is one of South Africa’s foremost political commentators and the author of the #1 bestseller We Have Now Begun Our Descent: How to Stop South Africa Losing its Way. A longtime weekly columnist for The Times (South Africa), he has also written for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and Financial Times, among other outlets. The former publisher of The Sowetan and Sunday World, he now lives in New York.

Kyle Dacuyan is a poet, performer, and translator. His poem have appeared in DIAGRAM, Lambda Literary, Foundry, and Best New Poets, among other places. He is the recipient of scholarships from Poets House, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Academy of American Poets. Prior to joining The Poetry Project, he served as co-director of National Outreach and Membership at PEN America, where he led the launch of a nationwide community engagement fund for writers. Previously, he served as associate director at the Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America.

The Poetry Project

American Academy of Poets

St. Mark's in the Bowery Church

Poetry Foundation

The Paris Review 

O, Miami

Alex Waters is the technical producer, audio editor and engineer for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at [email protected] with inquiries. 

Joshua Whitehead

Joshua Whitehead is a Two-Spirit, Oji-nêhiyaw member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Calgary where he teaches Indigenous literatures and cultures with a focus on gender and sexuality.  His book of poetry, full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks 2017), was shortlisted for the inaugural Indigenous Voices Award and the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry.  His novel, Jonny Appleseed  (Arsenal Pulp Press 2018), established Joshua Whitehead as one of the most exciting and important new literary voices on Turtle Island.  Jonny Appleseed was long listed for the Giller Prize, shortlisted for the Indigenous Voices Award, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award, and won the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. In Making Love With the Land  (University of Minnesota, 2022), a book of essays, he writes in prose that is evocative and sensual, unabashedly queer and visceral, raw,  autobiographical, and emotionally compelling. Whitehead shares his devotion to the world in which we live and brilliantly—even joyfully—maps his experience on the land that has shaped stories, histories, and bodies from time immemorial.   His work is published widely in such venues as Prairie Fire, CV2, EVENT, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Fiddlehead, Grain, CNQ, Write, and Red Rising Magazine.

Robin Wall Kimmerer

University of Minnesota Press

Johnny Appleseed by Joshua Whitehead

Alex Waters is the technical producer, audio editor and engineer for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast, Con Confianza and The Stand Unshaken Podcast. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at [email protected] with inquiries.

Free Tasha Shelby is the website where you can learn more about Tasha's case. 

To support Tasha:

Governor Tate Reeves: C  Governor’s office,  call 601-359-3150/ email [email protected].

Lynn Fitch, Mississippi Attorney General:  601.359.3680/P.O. Box 220, Jackson MS 3920

Valena Beety is a law professor, an innocence litigator, and a former federal prosecutor. She has exonerated wrongly convicted clients, founded the West Virginia Innocence Project, and obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses. She served as an appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Governor's Indigent Defense Commission. She is currently a professor of law at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O' Connor College of Law and the deputy director of the Academy for Justice, a criminal justice center at the law school.V

Tasha Mercedes Shelby is a writer and an advocate for incarcerated women. Tasha was wrongly convicted of a crime that did not occur on June 16, 2000 in Biloxi, Mississippi. In her twenty-two years of incarceration, she has earned her GED, taken classes at Millsaps College through the Prison to College Pipeline, and developed as a writer and as an artist. She continues to fight her wrongful conviction and you can learn more about her struggle at Free Tasha Shelby.

Alex Waters is the technical producer, audio editor and engineer for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at  [email protected] with inquiries. 

Bloomberg Public Arts Challenge 

Audio used in the episode has been contributed by Bloomberg Philanthropies' Public Art Challenge. 

Artist David Best's Temple of Time brought the communities of Parkland and Coral Springs, Florida together on the one-year anniversary of the school shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School.

The Greenwood Art Project in Tulsa, Oklahoma commemorated the centennial anniversary of the 1921 massacre of a thriving Black community, known as Black Wall Street. The history of the massacre had been buried, and these art projects marked the community's resilience and recovery through installations by local artists who told the story of Black Wall Street's past, present, and future..

Bloomberg Philanthropies believes in the power of arts and culture to inspire creativity and spark collaboration. The Arts program supports artists and cultural organizations and improves audience experience to strengthen the creative landscape and quality of life in cities around the world. These efforts include facilitating collaborations between artists and local governments to address civic issues, building capacity for small and mid-sized cultural institutions, and increasing and enhancing visitor engagement through the integration of digital technology.

Data on projects over the five most recent Public Challenge Projects underscores their impact, including catalyzing more than $100 million in economic benefits for local communities. Cities can apply for Public Art Challenge grants until February 15, 2023.

Stephanie Dockery brings more than 12 years of experience in arts management to her role as a member of the Arts Team at Bloomberg Philanthropies. Currently, Stephanie manages Bloomberg Philanthropies’ Public Art Challenge, a national competition supporting temporary public art projects that address significant civic issues and demonstrate an ability to generate public-private collaborations, celebrate creativity, and strengthen local economies. She also manages partnership teams on the Bloomberg Connects portfolio app, a free app with guides to 160 cultural organizations. 

Elizabeth Howard  is the producer and host of the Short Fuse Podcast. 

Alex Waters is the technical producer, audio editor and engineer for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at  [email protected] with inquiries. 

Diane Glancy is a poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and professor emeritus at Macalester College. Her works have won the Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. and the Arrell Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from the Oklahoma Center the Book, among other awards. In 2018, Publishers Weekly named her book Pushing the Bear: A Novel of the Trail of Tears one of the ten essential Native American novels.

Turtle Point Press introduces readers to outstanding literature by classic and contemporary writers from around the globe. We promote the work of emerging and neglected authors alongside those who are better known. The mix creates a publishing program that is both iconoclastic and challenging, revealing lives not usually seen in books that are playful, poignant, and poetic. Our writers work with some of the best editors in publishing and are treated to exquisitely designed and produced books. We are especially dedicated to supporting women, the LGBTQ community, and writers whose first language is not English. 

Elizabeth Howard is the producer and host of Short Fuse Podcast.  She engages individuals in lively and provocative conversations around how the arts can affect social change.  As a creative director and communications consultant she is recognized for her creative approach in working with clients and assisting them in their messaging, branding and media, as they stride past boundaries in search of the new. Her portfolio includes authors, artists, and cultural organizations; business leaders, universities, nonprofit organizations; and professional service firms, including high-profile architectural and design firms, often with international practices.

Alex Waters

Alex is the technical producer, audio editor and engineer for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at  [email protected] with inquiries. 

Diane Alters

Diane Alters is a lecturer in journalism at Colorado College. She has worked as an editor or reporter for several publications, including the Boston Globe, the Sacramento Bee and the Denver Post and is co-author of Media, Home and Family (Routledge 2004). Her exquisite book of poetry, Breath, Suspended, (Finishing Line Press 2022.) was described by a critic as, “What it means to write at the aperture of grief.”

Edward Hirsch

Edward Hirsch is a beloved American poet. Gabriel: A Poem, published in 2014, is a book-length elegy for his son.  He has written 10 volumes of poetry and is the author of five prose books. His most recent book is 100 Poems to Break Your Heart. Edward Hirsch has taught creative writing and is president of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, a position he has held since 2002.

Sarah J. Purcell

Author, Spectacle of Grief, Public Funerals and Memory in the Civil War Era and L. F. Parker Professor of History at Grinnell College.

Alex Waters

Alex is the technical producer, audio editor and engineer for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at  [email protected] with inquiries. 

Valena Beety is a law professor, an innocence litigator, and a former federal prosecutor. She has exonerated wrongly convicted clients, founded the West Virginia Innocence Project, and obtained presidential grants of clemency for drug offenses. She served as an appointed commissioner on the West Virginia Governor's Indigent Defense Commission. She is currently a professor of law at Arizona State University's Sandra Day O' Connor College of Law and the deputy director of the Academy for Justice, a criminal justice center at the law school.V

Tasha Mercedes Shelby is a writer and an advocate for incarcerated women. Tasha was wrongly convicted of a crime that did not occur on June 16, 2000 in Biloxi, Mississippi. In her twenty-two years of incarceration, she has earned her GED, taken classes at Millsaps College through the Prison to College Pipeline, and developed as a writer and as an artist. She continues to fight her wrongful conviction and you can learn more about her struggle at Free Tasha Shelby.

Alex Waters 

Alex is the technical producer, audio editor and engineer for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at  [email protected] with inquiries. 

Amy D. Clark, PhD,

Amy Clark is a professor of Appalachian and Communication Studies at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, where she is the founding co-director of the Center for Appalachian Studies, and founding Director of the Appalachian Writing Project. She is author and co-editor of Talking Appalachian: Voice, Identity, and Community (University Press of Kentucky). Her work on Appalachian dialects has appeared in the New York Times and NPR, among other publications. She co-hosts the podcast Southern Salon: Culture and Communication Podcast  which includes a new series on Talking Appalachia. 

Jayne Moore Waldrop

Jayne Moore Waldrop is a  western Kentucky native,   She is the author of Retracing My Steps, a finalist in the 2018 New Women's Voices Chapbook Contest, and Pandemic Lent: A Season in Poems. Waldrop's work has appeared in the Anthology of Appalachian Writers, Still: The Journal, Appalachian Review, New Madrid Review, Deep South Magazine, New Limestone Review, Women Speak, and other literary journals. She lives in Lexington, Kentucky.

University Press of Kentucky  

The University Press of Kentucky has a dual mission—the publication of academic books of high scholarly merit in a variety of fields and the publication of significant books about the history and culture of Kentucky, the Ohio Valley region, the Upper South, and Appalachia. The Press is the statewide nonprofit scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth of Kentucky, serving all Kentucky state-sponsored institutions of higher learning as well as six private colleges and Kentucky’s two major historical societies.

The Short Fuse Podcast

Hosted and produced by Elizabeth Howard.  Learn more at Elizabeth Howard.

The Arts Fuse  

 The Arts Fuse was established in June, 2007 as a curated, independent online arts magazine dedicated to publishing in-depth criticism, along with high quality previews, interviews, and commentaries. The publication’s over 60 freelance critics (many of them with decades of experience) cover dance, film, food, literature, music, television, theater, video games, and visual arts. There is a robust readership for arts coverage that believes that culture matters.

  Courtesy of Smithsonian Folkways

Smithsonian Folkways Recordings is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the national museum of the United States. We are dedicated to supporting cultural diversity and increased understanding among peoples through the documentation, preservation, and dissemination of sound. We believe that musical and cultural diversity contributes to the vitality and quality of life throughout the world. Through the dissemination of audio recordings and educational materials we seek to strengthen people's engagement with their own cultural heritage and to enhance their awareness and appreciation of the cultural heritage of others. Smithsonian Folkways is part of the Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage.

Alex Waters 

Alex is the technical producer, audio editor and engineer for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at  [email protected] with inquiries. 

Meredith Hall 

Meredith Hall's memoir Without a Map was instantly recognized as a classic of the genre and became a New York Times bestseller. It was named a best book of the year by Kirkus and BookSense, and was an Elle magazine Reader’s Pick of the Year. Hall was a recipient of the 2004 Gift of Freedom Award from A Room of Her Own Foundation. Her work has appeared in Five Points, The Gettysburg Review, The Kenyon Review, The Southern Review, The New York Times, and many other publications. Hall divides her time between Maine and California.

Godine Publisher

Godine is an independent publisher located in Boston, Massachusetts. In 2020, with new titles that range from Shaun Bythell’s memoir, Confessions of a Bookseller to Thomas W. Gilbert’s groundbreaking history, How Baseball Happened: Outrageous Lies Exposed! The True Story Revealed.  Founded in 1970, Godine is home to the Black Sparrow Press, founded in 1966 and relaunched in Spring 2020 with titles including Wicked Enchantment: Selected Poems by Wanda Coleman, edited by Terrance Hayes, and Summer Solstice: An Essay by Nina MacLaughlin.

The Portsmouth Athenaenum 

The Portsmouth Athenaenum is a library, gallery and museum founded in 1817 and located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Membership libraries were first created in the 18th century. While there were once hundreds of membership libraries across America and today there are fewer than 20. Today, the Portsmouth Athenæum maintains a library of over 40,000 volumes, an archive of manuscripts, photographs, objects, and ephemera relating to local history and sponsors exhibitions, concerts, lectures, and other educational and cultural programs.

Alex Waters

Alex is the technical producer and editor for the Short Fuse Podcast. He is a music producer and a student at Berklee College of Music. He has written and produced music and edited for podcasts including The Faith and Chai Podcast and Con Confianza. He writes, produces and records music for independent artists, including The Living.  He lives in Brooklyn can can be reached at  [email protected] with inquiries.