This Business Of Music & Poetry Podcast

In this episode, Michael Amidei and Clifford Brooks interview author Marco Rafalà.

Marco Rafalà (https://www.marcorafala.com/) is a first-generation Sicilian American novelist, musician, and writer for award-winning tabletop role-playing games. He earned his MFA in Fiction from The New School and is a co-curator of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series in New York City. Born in Middletown, Connecticut, he now lives in Brooklyn, New York. His fiction and non-fiction have appeared in the Bellevue Literary Review and LitHub. How Fires End is his debut novel.

In this episode, Clifford Brooks and Michael Amidei interview R.J. Jeffreys. 

R.J. Jeffreys is a poet, writer, novelist, writing coach and mentor, celebrity ghostwriter, playwright, Executive Producer Digital Media for VIDA Voices & Views, and contributing editor and Senior Producer Radio Interviews Media for Tiferet Journal. 

In this episode, Cliff Brooks and Michael Amidei interview pastor, professor, musician, and poet Casanova Green. 

Casanova Green (https://www.cgcreate.online/) is a writer, singer/songwriter, educator, and pastor. He is a 2010 graduate of Ohio Northern University with a BA in Language Arts Education with a minor in voice and received an MFA in Creative Writing at the Etowah Valley Low-Residency MFA Program at Reinhardt University in 2018. Casanova is a member of the Southern Collective Experience and has been published in several publications including The Blue Mountain Review where he serves as a Contributing Editor, Raw Art Review, and Fredericksburg Literary and Art Review.  In 2019, he published a mini-chapbook entitled Whispers & Echoes and his first collection of poetry entitled Things I Wish I Could Tell You will be published in 2020.

He has done extensive ministry work since the age of nine and has served as a worship leader and choir director for over twenty years. He released his first album, A Worshiper Mentality, in January 2016; his second, Songs from the Journey: Part I, in August 2019; and his third album, Songs from the Journey: Part II, in February 2020. He will release his fourth album, Songs from the Journey: Part 3, in 2020

Currently, he is the Owner of CGCreate, LLC and serves as the Lead Pastor of True Vision Christian Community headquartered in Lancaster, OH with a church plant in Barnwell, SC. He and his family reside in Lancaster.

In this episode, Cliff Brooks and Michael Amidei interview author, artist, podcaster, and poet Eurydice Eve.

Eurydice (https://eurydice.net/) has been a sex writer & archivist, a multi-modal scholar & sexual freedom activist for 25 years. Eurydice’s work is steeped in philosophy & history & dedicated to the generations of silenced women for whom she hopes to speak. 

In this episode, Cliff Brooks and Michael Amidei interview poet Clay Matthews. 

Clay Matthews (@ClayBMatthews on Twitter) has published poetry in journals such as the Southern Review, diode, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, and elsewhere. His most recent book, Shore, was published by Cooper Dillon Books. His other books are Superfecta, and Pretty, Rooster. He currently lives in Elizabethtown, KY and teaches at Elizabethtown Community & Technical College.

A favorite quote from a review of Clay's work comes from MICHAEL MEYERHOFER of the Atticus Review, who said:

"Reading his poems fills me with much the same awe that I imagine I’d feel if I chanced upon an 800-pound gorilla deftly folding origami cranes to give to children after carving an ice sculpture and overhauling a tractor engine in record time.

So, yeah. I’m a fan."

In this episode, Cliff Brooks and Michael Amidei interview publisher and writer Tianna G. Hansen. 

Tianna G. Hansen has been writing her whole life, with her first love as poetry. She has studied fiction and dabbles in creative nonfiction. Tianna founded Rhythm & Bones Press (rhythmnbone.com) where she works as the editor-in-chief turning trauma into art. Find her published work at creativetianna.com or follow her on Twitter @tiannag92.

Social media links:

Twitter: @tiannag92 // @RhythmBonesLit

Facebook: @tiannaghansen // @rhythmboneslit

In this episode, Cliff Brooks and Michael Amidei interview Dr. Samantha Rose Hill. 

Dr. Hill (https://www.samantharosehill.com/)  received her doctorate in Political Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2014. From 2013-2015, she conducted post-doctoral research at Heidelberg Universität and the Institut für Philosophie at the Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main. She taught at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Amherst College, and is currently the Assistant Director of the Hannah Arendt Center for Politics and Humanities, Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics at Bard College and is Associate Faculty at the Brooklyn Institute for Social Research in New York City. She writes about Hannah Arendt, Critical Theory, the Frankfurt School, poetics, aesthetic theory, and the history of political thought.

You can find her work in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Public Seminar, OpenDemocracy, Theory & Event, Contemporary Political Theory, The South Atlantic Quarterly, The Journal of the Hannah Arendt Center, and Amor Mundi, among other publications.

She the author of two forthcoming books: Hannah Arendt (2021, Reaktion Books) and Hannah Arendt’s Poems.

In this episode, Clifford Brooks and Michael Amidei interview poet Tyree Daye.

Tyree Daye (http://www.tyree.work/) a poet from Youngsville, North Carolina, and a Teaching Assistant Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is the author of two poetry collections River Hymns 2017 APR/Honickman First Book Prize winner and Cardinal forthcoming from Copper Canyon Press 2020. Daye is a Cave Canem fellow. Daye’s work has been published in Prairie Schooner, New York Times, Nashville Review. Daye won the 2019 Palm Beach Poetry Festival Langston Hughes Fellowship, 2019 Diana and Simon Raab Writer-In-Residence at UC Santa Barbara, and is a 2019 Kate Tufts Finalist. Daye most recently was awarded a 2019 Whiting Writers Award.

In this episode, Clifford Brooks and Michael Amidei interview author Zoe Fishman. 

Zoe Fishman (https://www.zoefishman.net/) the critically acclaimed author of Invisible As Air (Morrow, September '19), the bestselling Inheriting Edith, (Morrow, October ’16), Driving Lessons (Morrow, April ’14), Saving Ruth (Morrow, May ’12) and Balancing Acts (Harper, March ’10). Her books have been translated into Hebrew, German, Italian, Dutch and Polish and are also available in Audio and Large Print editions. She’s the recipient of a myriad of awards, including an AJC "10 Southern Books We Loved in 2019" selection, an IndieNext Pick, Target’s Breakout and Emerging Author Picks, a NY Post Pick, a Mom’s Choice Award and a Barnes & Noble Hot Read.

Interviews and profiles of her have been featured on NBC’s “Atlanta & Co.” and FGTV, as well as in Publisher’s Weekly, Mobile Bay Magazine, The Atlanta Jewish Times and The Huffington Post. Her essays have been published in The New York Times' Modern Love column, as part of The Atlanta Journal Constitution's Personal Journey series and Modern Loss among others.

Zoe worked in the New York publishing industry for thirteen years in the editorial department of Random House, the rights department of Simon & Schuster and later, as an agent for two boutique literary firms before moving to Atlanta in August of 2011 with her family.

She is the Executive Director of The Decatur Writers Studio as well as an instructor. She is also an instructor in the Emory Continuing Education program. In the Spring of 2017, she was the Visiting Writer at SCAD Atlanta. She is currently working on her next novel.

In this episode, Cliff Brooks and Michael Amidei interview Jim Reese.

Jim Reese ( www.jimreese.org )

Jim Reese is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Great Plains Writers’ Tour at Mount Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota. Reese’s poetry and prose have been widely published, and he has performed readings at venues throughout the country, including the Library of Congress and San Quentin Prison. Reese’s awards include First Place in the 2018 Allen Ginsberg Poetry Awards, a 2018 Distinguished Achievement Award from Mount Marty College, and a Distinguished Public Service Award in recognition of his exemplary dedication and contributions to the Education Department at Federal Prison Camp Yankton. His books include These Trespasses (The Backwaters Press, 2005), ghost on 3rd (New York Quarterly Books, 2010), and Really Happy! (New York Quarterly Books, 2014). A fourth collection, Dancing Room Only, is forthcoming by New York Quarterly Books in 2020. His first book of nonfiction, Bone Chalk, will be published by Stephen F. Austin State University Press in 2019.