CBAW Loves...

Community Building Art Works

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CBAW Loves...

a Community Building Art Works Book Club Podcast

07/16/2024

Someplace Generous with Elaina Ellis and Amber Flame and Seema Yasmin

In this episode, we welcome Someplace Generous editors Elaina Ellis and Amber Flame and author/physician Seema Yasmin to discuss Someplace Generous- a vibrantly diverse and inclusive anthology of romantic short stories. Topics include the rules of writing romance, reading as a tool for empathy, and the power of telling romantic stories that engage new and different dynamics. Reference & Notes: Purchase 'Someplace Generous' on CBAW Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/79565/9781955905626 'The neurologist gives us permission' by Seema Reza: https://poets.org/poem/neurologist-gives-us-permission Correction from Elaina Ellis: "The author of 'A Witch’s Guide to Fake Dating a Demon' was mistakenly noted in the discussion. It should be "Sarah Hawley." (Find the book here: https://bookshop.org/a/79565/9780593547922 ) About The Book: Someplace Generous--a vibrantly diverse and inclusive anthology of romantic short stories--can be described in one word: yes. Featuring stories by award-winning poets like Richard Siken, Rachel McKibbens, and Brionne Janae; acclaimed fiction writers like Temim Fruchter, Corinne Manning, and Max Delsohn; and popular thinkers like Jessica P. Pryde, Someplace Generous presents voices largely new to the genre of romance, each bringing a fresh take on what it means to tell a love story. This first book from Generous Press, a new imprint committed to changing the face of romance genre-fiction, is a collection of twenty-two never-before-published stories about joy, passion, and generous consent. In these pages, desire is centered and explored through queer, trans, Black, AAPI, Latinx, Jewish, disabled, and neurodivergent lenses, and the ages of authors and characters span generations. The brilliant authors herein have spun lush, poetic tales featuring characters and perspectives historically excluded from romance narratives. Through a variety of styles, lengths, and subgenres--ranging from flash-fiction to short stories, speculative to satire to romcom--there is something here for every kind of reader. The lovers in Someplace Generous--whether they are sapphic vampires or undercover super-heroes, teenagers, or middle-aged mamas--choose each other, and along the way, they choose themselves, too. Featuring twenty-two stories by twenty-two authors, Someplace Generous presents voices largely new to the genre of romance-fiction, each bringing a fresh take on what it means to tell a love story. About Our Guests: Elaina Ellis (she/her) is publisher and cofounder at Generous Press. She owns and operates A Trusted Reader, providing literary book editing services for brilliant writers of all stripes. For ten years she worked at the Pulitzer Prize-winning publishing house Copper Canyon Press where she served as editor. She is the author of Write About an Empty Birdcage, and has received support from Artist Trust, Mineral School, Vermont Studio Center, Jack Straw, Tent, 4Culture, and Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. Amber Flame (she/her) is deputy publisher and cofounder at Generous Press. She is a multi-genre writer, educator, and arts administrator serving as program director for Hedgebrook, a premier writing residency for women-identified writers. She has served as a copyeditor, development editor, and general "fluffer" for all manner of texts. Her mission is joy. Flame is the author of the poetry collections Ordinary Cruelty and apocrifa; her writing has earned awards from Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, Jack Straw, Seattle Office of Arts & Culture, and YEFE NOF. Seema Yasmin is an Emmy Award-winning journalist who was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, medical doctor, professor, and poet. She attended medical school at Cambridge University and worked as a disease detective for the US federal government's Epidemic Intelligence Service. She currently teaches storytelling at Stanford University School of Medicine, and is a regular contributor to CNN, Self, and Scientific American, among others.

59 min
05/13/2024

CBAW Loves...City of Laughter featuring author Temim Fruchter

In this episode City of Laughter author Temim Fruchter joins hosts Seema and Amelia, returning guest Amber Flame, and CBAW community members Amy, Jaci, Leena, & Raye, for a conversation about fiction as a portal, imagined queer lineages, and writing as a way to wrestle with the reality of mortality and time. Don’t forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. About City of Laughter (from the publisher, Grove Press)A rich and riveting debut spanning four generations of Eastern European Jewish women bound by blood, half-hidden secrets, and the fantastical visitation of a shapeshifting stranger over the course of 100 years. An ambitious, delirious novel that tangles with queerness, spirituality, and generational silence, City of Laughter announces Temim Fruchter as a fresh and assured new literary voice. The tale of a young queer woman stuck in a thicket of generational secrets, the novel follows her back to her family's origins, where ancestral clues begin to reveal a lineage both haunted and shaped by desire. Ropshitz, Poland, was once known as the City of Laughter. As this story opens, an 18th century badchan, a holy jester whose job is to make wedding guests laugh, receives a visitation from a mysterious stranger--bringing the laughter the people of Ropshitz desperately need, and triggering a sequence of events that will reverberate across the coming century. In the present day, Shiva Margolin, recovering from the heartbreak of her first big queer love and grieving the death of her beloved father, struggles to connect with her guarded mother, who spends most of her time at the local funeral home. A student of Jewish folklore, Shiva seizes an opportunity to visit Poland, hoping her family's mysteries will make more sense if she walks in the footsteps of her great-grandmother Mira, about whom no one speaks. What she finds will make her question not only her past and her future, but also her present. Electric and sharply intimate, City of Laughter zigzags between our universe and a tapestry of real and invented Jewish folklore, asking how far we can travel from the stories that have raised us without leaving them behind. Purchase: https://bookshop.org/a/79565/9780802161284 Bios Temim Fruchter is a queer nonbinary writer who was raised in a Modern Orthodox Jewish household. She holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Maryland and has received first prize in short fiction from both American Literary Review and New South; she is a 2020 Rona Jaffe Foundation Writer's Award winner. She lives in Brooklyn, New York. https://www.temimfruchter.com/ Amber Flame is an artist and performer, whose work has garnered artistic merit residencies with Hedgebrook, Baldwin for the Arts, The Watering Hole, Wa Na Wari, Vermont Studio Center, and more. Flame's second book of poetry, apocrifa, launched May of 2023. Amber Flame is a queer Black dandy mama who falls hard for a jumpsuit and some fresh kicks. https://www.theamberflame.com/ City of Laughter on CBAW Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/a/79565/9780802161284

55 min
02/01/2024

Women of the Post- featuring discussion with author, Joshunda Sanders

In this episode, we welcome Women of the Post author, Joshunda Sanders for a conversation with Seema, Amelia and particpants from CBAW's More Than One Story program. Our discussion includes stories about the real-life women who inspired the characters in the novel, what it means to exist in a place that was not designed for you, and what has (and has not) changed in the military since WWII. Don't forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. We will read or play your comments on a future episode!About Women of the PostInspired by true events, Women of the Post brings to life the heroines who proudly served in the all-Black battalion of the Women's Army Corps in WWII, finding purpose in their mission and lifelong friendship.1944, New York City. Judy Washington is tired of having to work at the Bronx Slave Market, cleaning white women's houses for next to nothing. She dreams of a bigger life, but with her husband fighting overseas, it's up to her and her mother to earn enough for food and rent. When she's recruited to join the Women's Army Corps--offering a steady paycheck and the chance to see the world--Judy jumps at the opportunity.During training, Judy becomes fast friends with the other women in her unit--Stacy, Bernadette and Mary Alyce--who all come from different cities and circumstances. Under Second Officer Charity Adams's leadership, they receive orders to sort over one million pieces of mail in England, becoming the only unit of Black women to serve overseas during WWII.The women work diligently, knowing that they're reuniting soldiers with their loved ones through their letters. However, their work becomes personal when Mary Alyce discovers a backlogged letter addressed to Judy. Told through the alternating perspectives of Judy, Charity and Mary Alyce, Women of the Post is an unforgettable story of perseverance, female friendship and self-discovery. Purchase Women of the Post on our Bookshop affiliate storefront: https://bookshop.org/a/79565/9780778334071 Author Bio Joshunda Sanders is an award-winning author, journalist and speechwriter. A former Obama Administration political appointee, her fiction, essays and poetry have appeared in dozens of anthologies. She has been awarded residencies and fellowships at Hedgebrook, Lambda Literary, The Key West Literary Seminars and the Martha's Vineyard Institute for Creative Writing. Women of the Post is her first novel. Follow her on Instagram at https://instagram.com/joshunda/ About More Than One Story More Than One Story (MTOS) is a monthly online writing and creative arts workshop partially funded by the Department of Veterans Affairs’ SSG Parker Gordon Fox Suicide Prevention Grant. In these special workshops, artists and writers help participants connect across shared experiences of service as women and non-binary people by writing poems, stories, journaling, narratives, and creating visual arts such as paintings and meditative art. No experience with art making or poetry is necessary. Learn more at cbaw.org/mtos/

22 min
10/31/2023

Monstrilio with Tarfia Faizullah

Episode 8: Monstrilio, featuring a discussion with Tarfia Faizullah. In this episode, we discuss Gerardo Sámano Córdova's debut novel Monstrilio. Don't forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. We will read or play your comments on a future episode! Grieving mother Magos cuts out a piece of her deceased eleven-year-old son Santiago's lung. Acting on fierce maternal instinct and the dubious logic of an old folktale, she nurtures the lung until it gains sentience, growing into the carnivorous little Monstrilio she keeps hidden within the walls of her family's decaying Mexico City estate. Eventually, Monstrilio begins to resemble the Santiago he once was, but his innate impulses--though curbed by his biological and chosen family's communal care--threaten to destroy this fragile second chance at life. A thought-provoking meditation on grief, acceptance, and the monstrous sides of love and loyalty, Gerardo Sámano Córdova blends bold imagination and evocative prose with deep emotional rigor. Told in four acts that span the globe from Brooklyn to Berlin, Monstrilio offers, with uncanny clarity, a cathartic and precise portrait of being human. Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, REGISTERS OF ILLUMINATED VILLAGES (Graywolf, 2018) and SEAM (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere.The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, three Pushcart prizes, and other honors, Tarfia presents work at institutions and organizations worldwide, and has been featured at the the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh, the Library of Congress, the Fulbright Conference, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, the Radcliffe Seminars, NYU, Barnard, UC Berkeley, the Poetry Foundation, the Clinton School of Public Service, Brac University, and elsewhere.Tarfia’s writing is translated into Bengali, Persian, Chinese, and Tamil, and is part of the theater production Birangona: Women of War. Tarfia’s collaborations include photographers, producers, composers, filmmakers, musicians, and visual artists, resulting in several interdisciplinary projects, including an EP, Eat More Mango. In 2016, Tarfia was recognized by Harvard Law School as one of 50 Women Inspiring Change, and is a 2019 USA Artists Fellow. Born in Brooklyn, NY to Bangladeshi immigrants and raised in Texas, Tarfia currently lives in Dallas.

44 min
09/30/2023

In the Shelter with Amber Flame and Ben Weakley

Episode 7: In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World, featuring discussion with Amber Flame & Ben WeakleyIn this episode our guests Amber Flame & Ben Weakley chat with us about Pádraig Ó Tuama’s ‘In The Shelter.’ Topics include faith, reconciling contradictions within the self, and finding shelter in one another.Don’t forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. We will read or play your comments on a future episode!About “In the Shelter: Finding a Home in the World”From master storyteller and host of On Being’s Poetry Unbound, Pádraig Ó Tuama, comes an unforgettable memoir of peace and reconciliation, Celtic spirituality, belonging, and sexual identity.“It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.” Drawing on this Irish saying, Ó Tuama relates ideas of shelter and welcome to our journeys of life, using poetry, story, biblical reflection, and prose to open up gentle ways of living well in a troubled world.In the Shelter introduces Corrymeela, the Northern Ireland peace and reconciliation community Ó Tuama led for many years, and throughout the book he reveals the power of storytelling in communities of conflict. From the heart of a poet comes a profound look at the landscapes we all try to inhabit even as we always search for shelter, a place we can call home.An instant spiritual classic in Ireland and Britain, now brought to a US readership.About Our GuestsAmber Flame is an interdisciplinary creative, activist and educator whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published widely and explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and interstitial joy. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and Jack Straw Writer Program alum, Amber Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame was a recipient of the CityArtist grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs to write, produce and perform her one-person play, Hands Above the Covers. In early 2018, Flame co-curated the art installation Black Imagination at Core Gallery in Seattle. Her first solo exhibit debuted in 2019 with a project entitled ::intrigue:: 8, a multimedia installation, through Jack Straw Production’s Artist Support and New Media Gallery fellowships. Hugo House’s 2017-2019 Writer-in-Residence for Poetry, Flame’s second book of poetry, titled apocrifa, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Flame has created and implemented programming for more than 15 years, working in education equity, Black media, youth empowerment, and with women and youth impacted by incarceration. Recently named Program Director for Hedgebrook, she continues to work as a writing instructor while working on a third collection of poetry, remounting her full-length play, developing a few nonfiction anthologies, and raising her daughter. Amber Flame is a queer Black mama just one magic trick away from growing her unicorn horn.Ben Weakley spent fourteen years in the U.S. Army, beginning with deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan and finishing at a desk inside the Pentagon. He writes poetry and prose about the enduring nature of war and the human experience for veterans, their families, and anyone who would help them bear witness to war and its aftermath.A believer in the power of words to empower and heal, Ben leads writing workshops for Active Duty Military, Veterans, their families and caregivers, as well as Frontline Health Care Workers and other communities of ordinary people bearing witness to a difficult world.Ben lives in the Tri-Cities of Northeast Tennessee with his wife, two children, and a well-meaning but poorly behaved hound-dog.

1h 5m
08/25/2023

The Secret to Superhuman Strength with Tarfia Faizullah, Amber Flame, Dr. Nisha Gupta, Raychelle Heath and Miden Wood

Episode 6: The Secret to Superhuman Strength, featuring discussion with Tarfia Faizullah, Amber Flame, Dr. Nisha Gupta, Raychelle Heath & Miden Wood. Our hosts Seema & Amelia, along with the special guest panel of Tarfia Faizullah, Amber Flame, Dr. Nisha Gupta, Raychelle Heath, & Miden Wood, cover topics including what it means to be in a body, Buddhism, and the secret to superhuman strength. Don't forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. We will read or play your comments on a future episode! About Our GuestsTarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, REGISTERS OF ILLUMINATED VILLAGES (Graywolf, 2018) and SEAM (SIU, 2014). The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, three Pushcart prizes, and other honors, Tarfia presents work at institutions and organizations worldwide, and has been featured at the the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh, the Library of Congress, the Fulbright Conference, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, the Radcliffe Seminars, NYU, Barnard, UC Berkeley, the Poetry Foundation, the Clinton School of Public Service, Brac University, and elsewhere. Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary creative, activist and educator whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published widely and explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and interstitial joy. Recently named Program Director for Hedgebrook, she continues to work as a writing instructor while working on a third collection of poetry, remounting her full-length play, developing a few nonfiction anthologies, and raising her daughter. Amber Flame is a queer Black mama just one magic trick away from growing her unicorn horn. Dr. Nisha Gupta is an associate professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia, where she works as an arts-based phenomenological researcher, creativity scholar, and liberation psychologist.Her work as a researcher, artist, and educator seeks to embrace the creative process as a vehicle for building solidarity across difference, evoking empathy and compassion, and fostering joy and empowerment. Nisha was also trained clinically as a psychotherapist for eight years, with a focus on trauma therapy as well as liberation psychotherapy with queer people of color. She received her education at New York University (M.A.) and Duquesne University (Ph.D.), and has a background in the advertising industry prior to her career in psychology. She also host workshops for community organizations to teach arts-based phenomenology to the public as a therapeutic method. Raychelle Heath is a poet, artist, teacher, yoga and meditation instructor, podcaster, and digital nomad. She holds a BA in languages from Winthrop University and an MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina. While she primarily writes poetry, she considers herself a storyteller. She uses her poetry and her podcast to tell the multifaceted stories of black women in the world. She currently works as curriculum director, sanctuary coach, and facilitator for the Unicorn Authors Club. She also regularly facilitates workshops for BIPOC Writing Party and The World We Want workshops. Miden Wood is a writer and illustrator based out of Brooklyn, New York. Her stories and artwork have given her the opportunity to develop a short with Sesame Studios, to illustrate/animate a short film that was awarded a student BAFTA, and to make her friends laugh. You can follow Miden on Instagram.

56 min
06/29/2023

Why Fish Don't Exist Featuring Tarfia Faizullah, Amber Flame, and Raychelle Heath

Seema & Amelia invite back Tarfia Faizullah, Amber Flame, and Raychelle Heath to our virtual roundtable to discuss Why Fish Don't Exist. Topics include the power of naming things, dark nights of the soul, and of course whether or not fish exist! Don't forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. We will read or play your comments on a future episode! About Our Guests Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, REGISTERS OF ILLUMINATED VILLAGES (Graywolf, 2018) and SEAM (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, three Pushcart prizes, and other honors, Tarfia presents work at institutions and organizations worldwide, and has been featured at the the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh, the Library of Congress, the Fulbright Conference, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, the Radcliffe Seminars, NYU, Barnard, UC Berkeley, the Poetry Foundation, the Clinton School of Public Service, Brac University, and elsewhere. Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary creative, activist and educator whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published widely and explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and interstitial joy. A 2016 and 2017 Pushcart Prize nominee and Jack Straw Writer Program alum, Amber Flame’s first full-length poetry collection, Ordinary Cruelty, was published in 2017 through Write Bloody Press. Flame was a recipient of the CityArtist grant from Seattle’s Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs to write, produce and perform her one-person play, Hands Above the Covers. In early 2018, Flame co-curated the art installation Black Imagination at Core Gallery in Seattle. Her first solo exhibit debuted in 2019 with a project entitled ::intrigue:: 8, a multimedia installation, through Jack Straw Production’s Artist Support and New Media Gallery fellowships. Hugo House’s 2017-2019 Writer-in-Residence for Poetry, Flame’s second book of poetry, titled apocrifa, is forthcoming from Red Hen Press. Flame has created and implemented programming for more than 15 years, working in education equity, Black media, youth empowerment, and with women and youth impacted by incarceration. Recently named Program Director for Hedgebrook, she continues to work as a writing instructor while working on a third collection of poetry, remounting her full-length play, developing a few nonfiction anthologies, and raising her daughter. Amber Flame is a queer Black mama just one magic trick away from growing her unicorn horn. Raychelle Heath is a poet, artist, teacher, yoga and meditation instructor, podcaster, and digital nomad. She holds a BA in languages from Winthrop University and an MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina. While she primarily writes poetry, she considers herself a storyteller. She uses her poetry and her podcast to tell the multifaceted stories of black women in the world. She also explores her experiences with the culturally rich communities that she has encountered in her travels. Her work has been published by Travel Noire, Fourth Wave, Yellow Arrow Journal, The Brazen Collective, and Community Building Art Works. She currently works as curriculum director, sanctuary coach, and facilitator for the Unicorn Authors Club. She also regularly facilitates workshops for BIPOC Writing Party and The World We Want workshops."

1 hr
05/31/2023

Who is Wellness For? (Part 2) featuring Dr. Nisha Gupta, Tarfia Faizullah, and Raychelle Heath

In the second part of our CBAW Loves podcast on Who is Wellness For?, Seema & Amelia invite back Dr. Nisha Gupta and Tarfia Faizullah, and welcome Raychelle Heath to our virtual roundtable! The discussion begins with the question, “How are you thinking about wellness?” More topics include yoga, meditation, and how we can take the wellness practices that we need with respect. Don't forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. We will read or play your comments on a future episode! About Our Guests Dr. Nisha Gupta is an associate professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia, where she works as an arts-based phenomenological researcher, creativity scholar, and liberation psychologist. She disseminates research about lived experiences of psychological and sociocultural phenomena as art for social advocacy and community healing. Her work as a researcher, artist, and educator seeks to embrace the creative process as a vehicle for building solidarity across difference, evoking empathy and compassion, and fostering joy and empowerment. Nisha was also trained clinically as a psychotherapist for eight years, with a focus on trauma therapy as well as liberation psychotherapy with queer people of color. She received her education at New York University (M.A.) and Duquesne University (Ph.D.), and has a background in the advertising industry prior to her career in psychology. Nisha’s arts-based phenomenological research projects include: “ILLUMINATE” a phenomenological short film about the experience of being in the LGBTQ closet, for which she received the 2020 Annual APA Division 5 Distinguished Dissertation Award in Qualitative Methods; and “DESI EROS,” a series of surrealist folk art paintings about reclaiming erotic power among women from the South Asian Diaspora, which was featured on the NPR-affiliated podcast “The Academic Minute.” Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, REGISTERS OF ILLUMINATED VILLAGES (Graywolf, 2018) and SEAM (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, three Pushcart prizes, and other honors, Tarfia presents work at institutions and organizations worldwide, and has been featured at the the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh, the Library of Congress, the Fulbright Conference, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, the Radcliffe Seminars, NYU, Barnard, UC Berkeley, the Poetry Foundation, the Clinton School of Public Service, Brac University, and elsewhere. Tarfia’s writing is translated into Bengali, Persian, Chinese, and Tamil, and is part of the theater production Birangona: Women of War. Raychelle Heath is a poet, artist, teacher, yoga and meditation instructor, podcaster, and digital nomad. She holds a BA in languages from Winthrop University and an MFA in poetry from the University of South Carolina. While she primarily writes poetry, she considers herself a storyteller. She uses her poetry and her podcast to tell the multifaceted stories of black women in the world. She also explores her experiences with the culturally rich communities that she has encountered in her travels. Her work has been published by Travel Noire, Fourth Wave, Yellow Arrow Journal, The Brazen Collective, and Community Building Art Works. She currently works as curriculum director, sanctuary coach, and facilitator for the Unicorn Authors Club. She also regularly facilitates workshops for BIPOC Writing Party and The World We Want workshops."

1h 4m
05/17/2023

Who is Wellness For? (Part 1) Featuring Fariha Róisín

Seema & Amelia sit down with Fariha Róisín to discuss how she took care of herself while writing Who is Wellness For?, what love means to her, and the energy needed to keep trying to be a good person. Send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. About Who Is Wellness For? The multi-disciplinary artist and author of Like a Bird and How to Cure a Ghost explores the commodification and appropriation of wellness through the lens of social justice, providing resources to help anyone participate in self-care, regardless of race, identity, socioeconomic status or able-bodiedness. Growing up in Australia, Fariha Róisín, a Bangladeshi Muslim, struggled to fit in. In attempts to assimilate, she distanced herself from her South Asian heritage and identity. Years later, living in the United States, she realized that the customs, practices, and even food of her native culture that had once made her different--everything from ashwagandha to prayer--were now being homogenized and marketed for good health, often at a premium by white people to white people. In this thought-provoking book, part memoir, part journalistic investigation, the acclaimed writer and poet explores the way in which the progressive health industry has appropriated and commodified global healing traditions. She reveals how wellness culture has become a luxury good built on the wisdom of Black, brown, and Indigenous people--while ignoring and excluding them. Who Is Wellness For? is divided into four sections, beginning with The Mind, in which Fariha examines the art of meditation and the importance of intuition. In part two, The Body, she investigates the physiology of trauma, detailing her own journey with fatphobia and gender dysmorphia, as well as her own chronic illness. In part three, Self-Care, she argues against the self-care industrial complex but cautions us against abandoning care completely and offers practical advice. She ends with Justice, arguing that if we truly want to be well, we must be invested in everyone's well being and shift toward nurturance culture. Deeply intimate and revelatory, Who Is Wellness For? forces us to confront the imbalance in health and healing and carves a path towards self-care that is inclusionary for all. About Our Guest Fariha Róisín is a multidisciplinary artist, born in Ontario, Canada. She was raised in Sydney, Australia, and is based in Los Angeles, California. As a Muslim queer Bangladeshi, she is interested in the margins, liminality, otherness, and the mercurial nature of being. Her work has pioneered a refreshing and renewed conversation about wellness, contemporary Islam, and queer identities and has appeared in The New York Times, Al Jazeera, The Guardian, Vice, Village Voice, and others. In 2015, she co-wrote a self-care column for The Hairpin, an astrology column for them in 2017, and in 2019 was the writer-at-large and culture editor for The Juggernaut. From 2012 to 2016 she co-hosted the podcast Two Brown Girls with writer and friend Zeba Blay. In 2020 co-founded Studio Ānanda, an expansive space of cultivation and archive for radical, anti-colonial wellness. She is currently the deputy editor of Violet Book, sits on the advisory board of Slow Factory, and also writes a weekly newsletter. Róisín has published a book of poetry entitled How To Cure A Ghost (Abrams, 2019), a journal called Being In Your Body (Abrams, 2019) and a novel named Like A Bird (Unnamed Press, 2020) which was named one of the Best Books of 2020 by NPR, Globe and Mail, Harper’s Bazaar, a must-read by Buzzfeed News and received a starred review by the Library Journal. Upon the book’s release, she was also profiled in The New York Times. Her first work of nonfiction Who Is Wellness For? An Examination of Wellness Culture and Who it Leaves Behind (HarperWave, 2022) was released last year, and her second book of poetry Survival Takes A Wild Imagination is out Fall of 2023.

54 min
04/19/2023

Listening in the Dark (Pt. 2) Featuring Tarfia Faizullah, Amber Flame, and Dr. Nisha Gupta

In episode two of CBAW Loves, Seema and Amelia continue their discussion of the Listening in the Dark anthology, this time in discussion with our special guest panel made up of poet Tarfia Faizullah, poet Amber Flame, and Psychologist & Visual Artist Dr. Nisha Gupta. Don't forget: We want to hear from you! Read the book and and send in your thoughts to cbawloves@cbaw.org or share them on social media using the #CBAWLOVES hashtag. We will read or play your comments on a future episode! About Our Guests Tarfia Faizullah is the author of two poetry collections, REGISTERS OF ILLUMINATED VILLAGES (Graywolf, 2018) and SEAM (SIU, 2014). Tarfia’s writing appears widely in the U.S. and abroad in the Daily Star, Hindu Business Line, BuzzFeed, PBS News Hour, Huffington Post, Poetry Magazine, Ms. Magazine, the Academy of American Poets, Oxford American, the New Republic, the Nation, Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket, 2019), and has been displayed at the Smithsonian, the Rubin Museum of Art, and elsewhere. The recipient of a Fulbright fellowship, three Pushcart prizes, and other honors, Tarfia presents work at institutions and organizations worldwide, and has been featured at the the Liberation War Museum of Bangladesh, the Library of Congress, the Fulbright Conference, the Lannan Center for Poetics and Social Practice, the Radcliffe Seminars, NYU, Barnard, UC Berkeley, the Poetry Foundation, the Clinton School of Public Service, Brac University, and elsewhere. Amber Flame is an interdisciplinary creative, activist and educator whose work has garnered residencies with Hedgebrook, Vermont Studio Center, and more. A former church kid from the Southwest, Flame’s work is published widely and explores spirituality and sexuality, cross-woven with themes of grief and loss, motherhood and magic, and interstitial joy. Recently named Program Director for Hedgebrook, she continues to work as a writing instructor while working on a third collection of poetry, remounting her full-length play, developing a few nonfiction anthologies, and raising her daughter. Amber Flame is a queer Black mama just one magic trick away from growing her unicorn horn. Dr. Nisha Gupta is an associate professor of psychology at the University of West Georgia, where she works as an arts-based phenomenological researcher, creativity scholar, and liberation psychologist. She disseminates research about lived experiences of psychological and sociocultural phenomena as art for social advocacy and community healing. Her work as a researcher, artist, and educator seeks to embrace the creative process as a vehicle for building solidarity across difference, evoking empathy and compassion, and fostering joy and empowerment. Nisha was also trained clinically as a psychotherapist for eight years, with a focus on trauma therapy as well as liberation psychotherapy with queer people of color. She received her education at New York University (M.A.) and Duquesne University (Ph.D.), and has a background in the advertising industry prior to her career in psychology.

46 min
04/05/2023

Listening in the Dark (Pt. 1) Featuring Dr. Mindy Nettifee

Today we are so proud to bring you our debut episode of the CBAW Book Club Podcast, "CBAW Loves..."! In each episode Seema invites a rotating cast of fellow writers and authors to discuss a book of the month. Through the podcast, we will continue virtually building community and fostering genuine connection through reading. Join us! Read the book now and send us your thoughts via email at cbawloves@cbaw.org. We will share some of your comments on future episodes! (More details on our podcast site www.cbaw.org/podcast). This episode features an interview with Listening in the Dark contributing author, Dr. Mindy Nettifee! Dr. Mindy Nettifee is a poet, professional teaching artist, and somatic therapist specializing in trauma healing and expression. She is the author of three full-length collections of poems: Sleepyhead Assassins (Moon Tide Press), Rise of the Trust Fall (Write Bloody Press), and Open Your Mouth Like a Bell (Write Bloody Press) as well as a collection of essays on writing Glitter In The Blood – A Poet’s Manifesto for Better, Braver Writing (Write Bloody Press). She is a three time nominee for the Pushcart Prize, a Powell’s Books Indie Press Best Seller, and she co-edited the anthology Courage – Daring Poems for Gutsy Girls (Write Bloody Press). Her latest work is her doctoral dissertation Voice as Embodied Sense: Rethinking Voice and Language in Trauma Healing (ProQuest), which investigates the sensory capacities of the voice and the role they play in trauma healing and integration. Learn more about Mindy by visiting https://thecultofmindy.com/ About the book:For generations, women have been taught to ignore their intuitive intelligence, whether in their personal lives or professional ones, in favor of making logical, evidence-based decisions. But what if that small voice or deeper knowing was our greatest gift, an untapped power we could use to affect positive change?Edited by award-winning author, activist, and actress Amber Tamblyn, Listening in the Dark is a compilation of some of today's most striking women visionaries across industries--in literature, science, art, education, medicine, and politics--who share their experiences engaging with their own inner wisdom in pivotal, crossroad moments.Filled with deeply personal and revelatory essays, Listening in the Dark will empower readers to reconnect with their own unique intuitive process, to see it as the precious resource it is, and to be unafraid to listen to all that it has to say and all that it has to offer. Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@cbaw

49 min
TRAILER

CBAW Loves...Trailer

'CBAW Loves...' is a new book club podcast hosted by Seema Reza (CEO, CBAW/ author, When the World Breaks Open & A Constellation of Half Lives) and produced by Amelia Bane. Each episode Seema invites a rotating cast of fellow writers and authors to discuss a book of the month. Through the podcast, we will continue virtually building community and fostering genuine connection through reading. https://bookshop.org/p/books/listening-in-the-dark-women-reclaiming-the-power-of-intuition-amber-tamblyn/18252887?ean=9780778333333

2 min

TRAILER

CBAW Loves...Trailer

'CBAW Loves...' is a new book club podcast hosted by Seema Reza (CEO, CBAW/ author, When the World Breaks Open & A Constellation of Half Lives) and produced by Amelia Bane. Each episode Seema invites a rotating cast of fellow writers and authors to discuss a book of the month. Through the podcast, we will continue virtually building community and fostering genuine connection through reading. https://bookshop.org/p/books/listening-in-the-dark-women-reclaiming-the-power-of-intuition-amber-tamblyn/18252887?ean=9780778333333

03/29/2023

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2 min

5

out of 5

3 Ratings

a Community Building Art Works Book Club Podcast

Creator

Community Building Art Works
Years Active

2023 - 2024
Episodes

12
Rating

Explicit
Copyright

© Community Building Art Works
Show Website

CBAW Loves...