BLEED explores
the newest trends in literature and the arts through vodcasts (video
podcasts). Multimedia writer and
artist
Debra Di Blasi talks with some of the
most innovative
writers
and
artists of the 21st Century to find out how and why they create.
EPISODE 1 DREAM TIME: Artist/Curator Anne Austin Pearce What does the dream world have to do with the art world? BLEED host, Debra Di Blasi, talks with visual artist,
Anne Austin Pearce, who is also director of Greenlease Gallery at Rockhurst University in the new art center
of the US, Kansas City, Missouri.
Anne Austin Pearce studied at the Kansas City Art Institute, Brighton England Polytechnic, and University of Kansas, where she
received a BFA in printmaking. In 1996 she completed her MFA in painting and Drawing at James Madison University. Currently
Anne is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Rockhurst Universityi, and director of Greenlease Gallery of Art. Her drawings and paintings
have been exhibited widely in U.S. galleries and abroad, and reside in many private collections.
EPISODE 2 SMART LIT: Sissy Boyd, Teresa Carmody, Vanessa Place Who's writing (and publishing) the future's literary classics? Actor and playwright Sissy Boyd, Les Figues
publisher and novelist Vanessa Place, and Les Figues editor and novelist Teresa Carmody. Debra Di Blasi
meets up with them outside the Pod Hotel in New York.
EPISODE 3 MONSTROUS WOMEN OF THE AVANT GARDE An interview with editor, Nava Renek, and seven writers included in the anthology, Wreckage of
Reason: XXperimental Women Writers of the 21st Century. In April 2008 Debra Di Blasi sat them
down at the fabulous &NOW Festival of Innovative Literature and Art, held that year at Chapman
University Orange, California.This episode was made possible in part by a grant from the Arts
Council of Greater Metropolitan Kansas City.
Part One: Editor Nava Renek
Part Two: Alexanra Chasin
Part Three Megan Milks
Part Four Megan Milks
Nava Renek is editor of Wreckage of Reason: Anthology of Contemporary XXperimental Prose by Women Writers (Spuyten Duyvil, 2008). Renek is also author of the novels: Spiritland (Spuyten Duyvil, 2002) and forthcoming No Perfect Words. Her short fiction and articles have appeared in national literary magazines, websites, and newspapers. She is currently program coordinator for the Women’s Center at Brooklyn College.
Alexandra Chasin has taught literary, cultural, and gender studies at Boston College, Yale University, the University of Geneva, and Columbia University. She is the author of the story collection, Kissed By, andthe nonfiction book, Selling Out: The Gay and Lesbian Movement Goes to Market. Her short fiction has appeared in AGNI, Chain, sleeping fish, West Branch, Phoebe, The Capilano Review, and online in Exquisite Corpse, DIAGRAM, and elimae. A past recipient of a Bunting Fellowship and a Whiting Fellowship, Chasin now teaches in the Writing Department at Lang College, The New School.
Megan Milks is currently working on a Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing from the University of Illinois at Chicago. She has published critical work in American Book Review, Lost Magazine, Venuszine.com, Grapevineculture and Sparknotes. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in DIAGRAM, Pocket Myths, Forge, and Wreckage of Reason. She publishes a magazine called Mildred Pierce which, she states, more people should know about.
Amina Memory Cain is the author of I Go To Some Hollow, a collection of stories that will be published by Les Figues Press in January of 2009. Her work has appeared in journals such as 3rd bed, Denver Quarterly,Sidebrow, and La Petite Zine, and is forthcoming in The EncyclopediaProject (F-K) and Action, Yes. With Jennifer Karmin, in Chicago, she co-founded the Red Rover reading series three years ago, and next winter the two will present a month long writing and performance festival, When Does It or You Begin? (Memory as Innovation)
Part Five Aimee Parkison
Part Six Cynthis Reeves
Part Seven Danielle Alexander
Aimee Parkison, an Assistant Professor at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, has received a Christopher Isherwood Fellowship, a Writers at Work Fellowship, and a Kurt Vonnegut Fiction Prize. Her story collection, Woman with Dark Horses, was published by Starcherone. Parkison’s work has appeared in or is forthcoming from The Literary Review, Feminist Studies, Mississippi Review, North American Review, Quarterly West, Santa Monica Review, Other Voices, Crab Orchard Review, Fiction International, Fugue, Yalobusha Review, Seattle Review, Texas Review, Nimrod, Hayden’s Ferry Review, So to Speak, and Denver Quarterly.
Cynthia Reeves is a fiction writer and poet. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Ontario Review, Crab Orchard Review, and Colorado Review. Badland, her first book, won Miami University Press’s 2006 Novella Contest and was published in December 2007. Among other awards are Potomac Review’s 2005 Annual Fiction Prize and New Millennium 2006 First Short-Short Fiction Prize. Cynthia is currently writing a novel-in-stories set in post-World War I Italy, three published in Colorado Review, Silk Road, and Words+Images2007. She lives with her husband and two children near Valley Forge, PA.
Danielle Alexander holds an M.F.A. from the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop and a Ph.D. from the University of Denver. She teaches creative writing, composition and rhetoric, and literature at Belmont, and her scholarly interests include the relationship between cultural memory and history, narrative theory and narratology, translation, and genre studies. She writes fiction and poetry and is currently working on a novel set in fifteenth-century Spain and England.
EPISODE 4 SOWING BOOKS: Writer Davis Schneiderman How many years does it take to grow a book? Debra Di Blasi meets up with writer, professor
and "book farmer" Davis Schneiderman, at Lake Forest College just outside Chicago, Illinois.
