Emerging Form Christie Aschwanden

What if we dropped our expectations and preconceived ideas about our creative practice? In this episode, we speak with elite runner, author Katie Arnold about how her Zen practice of “coming to whatever you do in your life with a fresh and open mind” has influenced her creative work. We explore the story behind her new book, Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free, which tells the story of a traumatic wilderness accident and her path to healing. Plus, we discuss the choices we make around including other people’s stories in our writing. 
Katie Arnold is a longtime journalist and bestselling author of Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World: Zen and the Art of Running Free (2024), which tells the story of a traumatic wilderness accident and her path to healing. Her critically acclaimed memoir, Running Home, was published in 2019. An elite ultra runner and student of Zen, Katie teaches writing workshops exploring the link between movement and creativity. A former managing editor at Outside Magazine, she has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Outside, ESPN The Magazine, Runner’s World, and Elle, among others, as well as been a guest on NPR Weekend Edition Sunday and The Upaya Zen Center Podcast. She has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell and Ucross. Katie lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, with her husband, Steve Barrett, their two teenage daughters, and two dogs.
Christie’s review of Katie’s book, Running Home.


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When fiction writer Lydia Millet found herself “preoccupied by the overwhelm of the world,” she turned to writing nonfiction. “I thought if i tried to write about it I might think more lucidly about it.” We speak with her about her newest book, We Loved It All (part memoir, part bestiary), about the challenges and joys of changing genres, about the gap between her projections about being a novelist and actually being a novelist, and how books not only save lives, but souls. 
Lydia Millet has written more than a dozen novels and story collections. Her newest book is a memoir, We Loved It All, published this month. Her novel A Children's Bible was a New York Times "Best 10 Books of 2020" selection and shortlisted for the National Book Award. In 2019 her story collection Fight No More received an Award of Merit from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and her collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2010. She also writes essays, opinion pieces, book reviews, and other ephemera and has worked as an editor and staff writer at the Center for Biological Diversity since 1999. She lives in the desert outside Tucson with her family.


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“Invest always in relationships before you need them, be vulnerable with them,” says Courtney E. Martin, journalist, author, podcaster and speaker. In this episode, she shares with us an essential question for all journalists and creatives and discusses how it shaped a specific project, plus she offers advice for living a creative life based on Parker Palmer’s thoughts on “the tragic gap.” This is an episode focused on transparency, vulnerability, community and humility.
Courtney E. Martin is the author of four books, most recently, Learning in Public, a popular newsletter, called Examined Family, host of “The Wise Unknown” podcast from PRX, and co-host of the Slate “How To!” podcast. She’s also a co-founder of the Solutions Journalism Network and FRESH Speakers, and the Storyteller-in-Residence at The Holding Co. Her literal happy place is her co-housing community in Oakland, Calif. Her metaphorical happy place is asking people questions.


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image: Eben Pariser and Molly Venter
How do we get in the zone? What does that even mean for creatives? And how do we stay in it? And how do we get back in when kicked out? We speak with musicians and marriage partners Molly Venter and Eben Pariser about using the ancient technologies of poetry and music to help people tap into their subconscious and explore what treasure they have within them. 
Goodnight Moonshine is a guitar and vocal duet, and a musical marriage in all senses. The Duo combines the evocative voice and songwriting of Molly Venter, with Eben Pariser’s adventurous guitar playing. The result is folk music with a depth of improvisation and tonal subtlety usually reserved for jazz. 
Molly is well known for her sublime singing in the prominent female-vocal-group Red Molly, Her voice has been called “biker-chick smoky,” and with Goodnight Moonshine she is in full force as a songwriter with a trance-induced stream-of-consciousness writing style.  Eben cut his teeth as a street performer in New York City, playing guttural music of New Orleans with his band Roosevelt Dime, but he was quickly captured by classic jazz, and his improvisational skills are a hallmark of Goodnight Moonshine’s sound. 


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It’s all about balance–and in this episode we speak with botanist and writer Erin Zimmerman about choices she made in her new book Unrooted: Botany, Motherhood and the Fight to Save an Old Science. We also talk about the choices she’s made as she balances motherhood and work, being an introvert and finding a writing community, pursuing her passions and finding meaningful ways to recharge. Plus how she was inspired by Charles Darwin’s parenting. 
Erin Zimmerman is an evolutionary biologist turned science writer and essayist. She studied at the University of Guelph and at the Université de Montréal before traveling to South America to collect plant specimens, and then working at the Royal Botanic Gardens in England. In addition to her academic writing, her essays have appeared in publications including Smithsonian Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Undark, and Narratively.


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[image: Christie working with her Scientific American editor, Jeff DelViscio.]
We live in a society that wants to know. And yet uncertainty underlies all of science–one of our most essential tools for understanding the world. What is our relationship with uncertainty? Why is this relationship so important? And what does it have to do with creative practice? In this episode of Emerging Form, Christie Aschwanden talks about her new short-run podcast, Uncertain, hosted by Scientific American. We discuss the genesis of the project, the importance of finding people who are also passionate about your project, being receptive to opportunities, how we can be smart about creating congruent projects, how trying new media can spark our creative practice, and the importance of encouragement.
Uncertain from Scientific American https://scientificamerican.com/uncertain
Christie’s FiveThirtyEight story “There’s No Such Thing as ‘Sound Science’”




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