Category: National Endowement for the Arts

Jo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, This is Art Works. I’m Josephine Reed. We’re celebrating National Poetry with 2021 NEA Literature Fellow poet Leslie Sainz who has just received the 2024 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry for her debut collection, Have You Been Long Enough at Table. In her work, Leslie explores themes of identity, cultural heritage, and family history, drawing from her Cuban-American roots and her upbringing in Miami.  Her poetry is known for its vivid imagery, fluid structure, and emotional depth blending personal narratives with themes of displacement, family, and tradition. Today, Leslie shares her creative journey, offering a glimpse into the inspirations behind her work and she also reflects on her experience as a recipient of the NEA Literature Fellowship for Poetry and her role as a judge in the NEA’s Poetry Out Loud competition. But we begin with the ways Leslie Sainz navigates cultural memory and the role of poetry in exploring complex themes and contradictory ideas, as the title of her collection implies. Have You Been Long Enough at Table is a line from Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. And it’s a title with such ambiguity that can be read both welcoming and dismissive. I was curious why she chose it and how it reflects the themes that recur her collection.Leslie, I want to begin with the title of your collection, Have You Been Long Enough at Table? And it’s from Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. And it’s a title with such ambiguity because it both welcomes and dismisses. So tell me why you chose it and how does it reflect the themes that recur in this collection?Leslie Sainz: Thank you so much, Jo. I really appreciate your interpretation of the title. I think I’ve come to understand my poetics revolving around the idea of contradiction and uncertainty, and so to hear that is evident just in the title of the collection is very affirming in terms of my own goals. So, you’re absolutely correct, it was lifted from a passage in Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea,” which I had reread during graduate school after having a conversation with my father about what was at the time my thesis manuscript, which was an early, early draft of this collection. And he said, “Well, you know, I really think you should read “The Old Man and the Sea,” which I actually hadn’t read before. And as I started reading it, I came upon the following passage, and I’ll go ahead and read it to you. And it just stopped me in my tracks. So the passage that it’s lifted from reads, “Eat it so that the point of the hook goes into your heart and kills you, he thought. Come up easy and let me put the harpoon into you. All right, are you ready? Have you been long enough at table?” And so I just– there was something so syntactically strange about “Have you been long enough at table?” Jo Reed: And just for listeners who might not know The Old Man and the Sea, this is Santiago, the fisherman, who’s talking to a marlin who has swallowed a hook, and he’s being dragged out to sea by the fish.Leslie Sainz: Yes, exactly. And I think the domestic imagery that it conjures felt very right for me in this collection in that food is such an important cultural touch point for me and the collection…  even though it is partnered with violence, right, or the suggestion of violence, with the harpoon. Food is one of the primary ways in which I celebrate and enact my Cuban heritage, so that was very satisfying.  I just found that to be so captivating, and as someone who has not always been a fan of Hemingway’s syntax– I have to say that on the record, I just think there was such music to this in a way that I think I tend to experience Hemingway’s sentence structure in a rather kind of fixed, curt way, and this felt much more expansive. And so it just haunted me. And I had it written in my notebook for a few years before I came across it again and realized, I think this is it, I think this encompasses all of the questions that I have around this project.Jo Reed: Well, let’s hear a poem. Will you read the first poem from the collection?Leslie Sainz: Yes, of course. It’s one of my favorite poems to read.                                    Ño,                         Para los balceros.There is no country where the dead don’t float. Men and children going, having gone,     lung-wet across thickened water. Be it the body to know what’s missing. To call back the colors. At seathe stomach is a buglethough I’ve heard it called a scream. Oil drums headless as monarchs, styrofoam on the knees. Said of regimes: under or over. Here or there. The orchids are lovely this time of year and the women, writing. What covers the land and is the land—Much, in us, still.Jo Reed:  “Much,  in us, still.” That is so evocative and speaks, I think, to one of the major themes in the book, which is a displacement. It’s like, where do you situate yourself as the daughter of Cuban immigrants who’s never been to the island, yet still has the island in her?Leslie Sainz: Yeah, I think that’s a question that I will probably be asking for the rest of my life. And so this collection was a sort of desperate attempt to circumnavigate that question. And I think I’ve had different answers to it over time. And I think a lot of that has to do with my understanding of my own childhood and my relationship to my parents and their relationship to the island. Because, you know, my parents were children when they left Cuba, and so when folks ask me why I haven’t gone, one of my answers is often that I don’t really know where I would go. There aren’t any sort of landmarks that I feel like I would be able to recognize. I mean, my father left with his family in 1956 when he was two years old. They were in New Jersey for a little bit before settling in Brazil, which is where my father really grew up. My mother left the island in 1960 when she was four years old, and they have virtually no memories of Cuba, but they’re extremely proud people. And I think that’s something that I’ve come to understand about not just Cuban, but Cuban-American culture as a whole is that there’s a deep sense of pride within the exile community. And the narratives that they tell of their immigration often include this idea of them not necessarily having any other choice, that they were sort of forced to make these difficult decisions to leave, property if they had it, family. And so, it’s sort of an inheritance of yearning, I think, is what my answer is, at this moment, to that question. It’s very abstract and it’s a difficult thing to penetrate.Jo Reed: Where were you raised? Can you tell me just a little bit about your upbringing?Leslie Sainz: Of course. So I was born and raised in Miami, Florida, more specifically the Palmetto Bay area. My parents still live in my childhood home, and I make it back maybe once or twice a year, in a good year. But yeah, it’s so funny. I think I never really came to appreciate Miami until I left it. I’m currently based in Vermont, which is, you know…Jo Reed: Very different weather-wise.Leslie Sainz: Very different. Very different. And, you know, I went to undergrad in Pittsburgh. I did grad school in Wisconsin. So I’ve had a little bit of preparation in terms of winter weather, but I’m not really good in the heat. And I think maybe that’s why I didn’t enjoy Miami very much. And I think it wasn’t until I left it that I was truly able to appreciate how fortunate I was to have grown up in a city that is so vibrant and acknowledges the massive contributions that a number of immigrant cultures have brought to the area. Whether it’s Cuban or Haitian or Central American. And, I went years, you know, when I was living in the Midwest and elsewhere, not hearing a lick of Spanish. And I never thought that would be a lack that I felt so viscerally, but it really was. So now when I’m home, you know, I have an itinerary, essentially, of things that I need to visit to feel sort of charged up and like myself again before I return to whoever I am based.Jo Reed: Why poetry? What brought you to poetry particularly? And what does it allow you to do that other art forms, other forms of writing might not?Leslie Sainz: Yeah. I’ve been writing poetry for as long as I can remember. I remember in elementary school when we were first introduced to poetry, I just, I took to it immediately. And I think from then on, I never stopped. I always kept a little diary or a journal and, you know, wrote down, you know, lines, lyrics. And eventually I think as I continued to learn more about the poetic canon, I realized, okay, maybe I’m doing something here, maybe these are poems. And I feel very fortunate because I had such amazing educators and instructors in my life who kind of recognized my fascination and obsession with language, even its smallest unit, and were very encouraging. And I think if I hadn’t been met with encouragement from my teachers, I don’t know that I would have had the confidence to take it more seriously as my education continued. But as far as what poetry does, I’ve been really taken with this definition of poetry that the poet, and now novelist, Kava Akbar has shared, which is that poetry is a spiritual technology. And I think I would take that one step further and say, for me, poetry feels like the closest thing that we have to time travel. I think because poetry is not beholden to the truth, like nonfiction or journalism, and it’s also not beholden to sense, like most contemporary prose, I think it is able to use sort of the absurdities and expansiveness of its form to allow us to move through time in different ways. And I think that has always astonished me and is certainly what keeps me going, because it feels like poetry can and has taken me everywhere and anywhere.Jo Reed: That is so interesting because your poetry just works with specificity and ambiguity, almost in equal measure. And that really is a hard balancing act, but you really do work with that tension and the idea of time travel makes sense.Leslie Sainz: Yeah, I mean, especially with what you mentioned earlier, having not been to the island, I think taking on this project in a poetic form inspired me to look at historical archives and photographs and even family archives and work sort of ecfrastically through and against them as a means of accessing a point in time and a place that will forever be lost to me. So yeah, I think that I really appreciate what you just said about that.Jo Reed: In your collection, you use so many different poetic forms. Throughout the book, you use sonnets and prose poems, long stanzaless poems, and so on and so on. Tell me your process for choosing the form that you use to express your poetics.Leslie Sainz: Yeah, so this is always a hard question for me in that I find myself to be a very intuitive writer when it comes to form. I’m very taken with the relationship between form and content, and I sort of think of it as a kind of codependent relationship, in a way, that there’s– that the power dynamics between form and content can never quite be balanced. And I think for me, content is usually driving the plane. And I think from there, I will then consider,  given the tone or the themes or the images, questions or ideas in this piece, what container would best suit it? So you know, for example, there are poems in the collection that are single stanza, but they’re very narrow. And that’s deliberate, of course. I’m thinking about compression. I’m thinking about creating a sort of claustrophobic environment on the breath and on the page in order to heighten tension. But then there are other examples in which I’m thinking about, how can there be a more harmonious relationship? Or maybe the content, or the syntax or the diction is more interested in displacing a reader. And so I have to think about how do I make it on the page as easily legible as possible if I’m allowing my language to be less legible in terms of its accessibility, or its ability to be kind of pinned down. So it’s definitely a delicate balancing act, but one I thoroughly enjoy conceptualizing.Jo Reed: Well, you use the sonnet form throughout the book. You have seven sonnets for the seven powers in the Aruba tradition or Santeria. Can you tell me how that tradition figures in this book and what that opened up for you?Leslie Sainz: Yeah, absolutely. So there’s kind of a roundabout way to how I got to there. But growing up in Miami, there are tons of botanicas around, which are essentially these shops that sell statues and herbs and things that one would need to practice their faith tradition. And so it’s not an uncommon thing to come across one, or even to come across practitioners themselves. And so that was probably my first introduction was just environmentally it was present. But as I grew older, I learned more about it through family connections. My second cousin, Miguelito, who was a painter. And one of his favorite subjects were the orishas. So he would paint Yemaya, Changó, Oshun, and they were just these extraordinary, lively, colorful portraits that were really made in a kind of reverence. And so that was probably my initial introduction towards the ways in which the Yoruban tradition can not necessarily be watered down, but how even those who may not necessarily practice the faith explicitly are still very familiar with its important figures and how that iconography has become synonymous, I think, with Cuban culture at large, and that there’s a way to sort of acknowledge those figures and respect and revere them without necessarily practicing the religion in earnest. And actually afterwards, more recently, I learned that my maternal grandmother had a shrine in her home in Hialeah, which she keeps kind of hidden, but has statues of orishas. And I think that was sort of the tipping point for me as I was thinking about the series of American sonnets written for Las Siete Potencias Africanas or The Seven African Powers because I was fascinated by her decision, especially in a place like Hialeah, to kind of keep that worship very private. And I wanted to bring that private into a more public space while also keeping quite close to the chest the relationship, the speakers of those poems, which for me function as a kind of persona, have with those specific orishas. Jo Reed: Why choose the sonnet form to explore this?Leslie Sainz: And, you know, the sonnet form is one of my absolute favorite forms. I mentioned before the idea of the poetic form as a container. And to me, I think it’s just the most perfect container. I mean, I think 14 lines is just ideal. And as I was drafting into the manuscript, I sort of found myself continuously drafting poems that were around 14 lines. And it almost became a prompt for me that if I couldn’t write something in 14 lines, then maybe I just didn’t have a handle on it yet. And, you know, given the extensive tradition of sonnets that continues to be, you know, transgressed and challenged in the most exciting ways in contemporary poetry, I wanted to look at it as a space for prayer, in a way, and thinking about the sort of romantic leanings of prayer and devotion.Jo Reed: Well, can we hear “Sonnet for Oshun”?Leslie Sainz: Oh, of course. Which, not that I play favorites, but it might actually be my favorite poem in the section. Sonnet for Oshun. After my left arm I washed my right, neck, décolletage,and navel. I ate ground meat with large crystals of imported salt.The women and men who would stroke my hair if I asked, I thought of them fondly then sadly. At the flea market,what I touched with a fingernail was a copper lamp, a mundanepainting of mountains, the cashier’s hum. I bought nothing I didn’t want. In the cul-de-sac, I found clouds on leashes, loose roosters.I thought thoughts ugly as clothespins. Reading a used book,I suspected I knew less about death than the last person who held it.I spat into a mirrored sink. I lost my slippers and face. To feel morelike water, I drank it. Before bed, I walked my plank of uncertaintiesand plunged further into uncertainty. Am I capturing all of historyin this gesture? I shouted into the future. In the wet air of the future,I could have but never appeared. No one was sorry but me.Jo Reed: And those time-traveling aspects again, lovely. And we should say Oshun is associated with water, with fertility, beauty, femininity, purity, sensuality.Leslie Sainz: And even the island itself. So Oshun is a very important figure to Cuba, which I should say, not all practitioners of Santería come from Cuba. So she’s especially important to the culture.Jo Reed: Can you describe your writing process? How do you approach the creation of a new poem?Leslie Sainz:  I’ve come to understand it as being actually rather project or moment dependent. The poems I’m writing now are coming to me in very strange ways and I’m having to learn how to surrender to them and to a new kind of process. And maybe that’s really where it starts for me is coming to terms with having to surrender to something. Anyone close to me will tell you that I have difficulty letting go, and that I like to have control over things to feel comfortable. And maybe that’s why I’ve stuck with poetry for so long, is that my writing of it is where I have the least amount of control, I think, in my life. And I think that’s a good thing. But yeah, I think normally, you know, the seeds of a poem will come to me in maybe a single image or even just a word that I think sounds really interesting. Usually words with heavy consonants are very attractive to my ear. I’m always trying to disrupt a kind of linear thinking and instead allow for there to be space for connective tissue to be applied afterwards. Because I do think, for me, the act of writing poetry feels like a more subconscious act. I’ve been reading a lot of Jack Spicer recently, and he was sort of famous for describing the process as being more like receiving a sort of radio signal rather than being in charge of the product itself. You’re a receptor rather than the actor themselves. And so I find that to be pretty true to my understanding of how poems come to be. And yeah, from there, I think, you know, allowing myself to receive that transmission and then, you know, the hard part coming almost afterwards, for me at least, through revision, which is where I think of it as sort of applying conscious thinking to something that’s done more subconsciously. And then I can get kind of more analytical at that stage and start thinking, okay, am I revising for complication or am I revising for clarification? And I sort of go almost line by line, stanza by stanza at that point in the process.Jo Reed: I love that question.Leslie Sainz: Oh, thank you. It has served me well.Jo Reed: I bet, I bet. I am going to start applying it to my work. Thank you. So how did, how, then you put this collection together. It’s your first, it’s your debut collection, your first collection. How did you put, “Have You Been Long Enough At Table” together? And how long did it take you to, have it, arrange it the way you wanted it?Leslie Sainz: Yeah, so it took about eight years to write and there were definitely different drafts of the manuscript that I think over time became, or felt at least for me, riskier and riskier. I think that’s another thing that’s very central to my writing process, especially in working on a specific project rather than just individual poems.  I wasn’t satisfied until the version that is currently published. And even then, there are days in which I think I’ve failed to do what I hope to do. But, but for me, it really went back to the idea of risk, because it felt very risky to write these poems, to write about an island that I haven’t visited, to sort of expose narratives of my relationship with my family and my upbringing to the world, to also relay what it’s like to essentially grow up in a conservative household and have to do a lot of conscious and careful unlearning to prioritize a kind of self-determination that would lead to the establishment of my own politics and my own values. But as far as the actual organizing goes of the collection, I feel very fortunate to have worked very closely with my editor, Alisa Ogie at Tin House, who is just, I cannot sing her praises enough. I feel so lucky to call her a friend as well as my editor. And she felt very strongly in our initial conversations that the sonnets should feel like the backbone to the collection. And so they’re very intentionally placed across the book. So each section will have multiple sonnets in them. So there’s sort of this inescapable anchor. And a lot of poets will tell you that as they’re organizing a manuscript, they’ll print out individual pages of poems and maybe organize them on the floor or tape them on a wall, and that was definitely part of my process as well and I loved it. And that was very helpful for me in creating not just an emotional arc, but sort of distilling the project down to certain themes to be mindful of… I guess, moments in which poems were butting up against each other in an ordering sequence that felt too similar or maybe too dissimilar, like the sort of blank space. Maybe one can think of it as like the gutter in terms of book design terms, like what happens from one page to another that allows for that brief silence to be disrupted in a way that feels earned. Jo Reed: You have received many awards and fellowships, including a 2021 NEA Literature Fellowship for Poetry. And I wonder how that recognition impacted your writing, your sense of yourself as a poet, your career.Leslie Sainz: Yeah, I mean, I still struggle to articulate what that award has meant to me, even outside of the extremely generous financial component of the award, the validation that offered me. I am not sure that I would have finished this collection if I had not received that award, which, I should mention. I mean, I just feel– I keep saying this, but it’s true. I feel so so lucky to have won an NEA prior to the publication of my first book. I mean, I think that is, you know, the ultimate dream of many emerging writers, and I think to sit and think that a committee of writers who I deeply admire and who I consider to be a student of their work, to know that they looked at, in some ways, even early drafts of these poems and thought, “This is a voice that we want to invest in, that we want to hear more from.” I refer to that often, I think, when the inevitable self-doubt creeps back in. And it absolutely has carried me through some of the darker times of doubt. So yeah, I mean, the NEA has awarded me so very much. And every individual that I’ve ever corresponded with at the National Endowment for the Arts have been so generous, so encouraging, and they continue to support my work long after other cohorts of fellows arrive. They are so good at reminding their fellows that this is a career-long investment, and I remain so touched by that.Jo Reed: I know it’s not easy to apply for an NEA fellowship, and I wonder if you would have any advice for other poets or writers who might be considering applying for a fellowship at the NEA or at another foundation?Leslie Sainz: Yeah, for sure. It’s interesting, maybe this will be my hot take on the podcast, but oftentimes when specifically the NEA application period is open, you’ll hear folks talk about how difficult the application is. I only applied once for the NEA, and I did not find it that hard to put together, and I do think part of it is a personality thing, because it does require a certain level of organization that I’m not sure that all writers have a good handle on. I am very type A, and so I was already keeping pretty meticulous records of my individual publications, which are an eligibility requirement for the NEA, and I do think it can be a bit of a tedious process to then write out all 20 publications that you have and make sure that you have the issue number, the year of publication, the page numbers in which you appear on, whether or not it was print, or online or all of the other specifics of that record keeping can be difficult to track down, especially if it’s not something that you stay on top of, and I think maybe that’s where some of the difficulty really comes from. I think that’s probably where the start of my advice would really begin, which is to make it easier on yourself, and stay organized. Keep a record of these things Most folks applying for the NEA are probably also writers who are applying for other fellowship applications, and some which require, you know, an up-to-date CV, and so I think sort of treating it as this supplemental document in which if you’re updating your CV with something, also double-check this record of where you’ve had your work published. So that’s more of a technical piece of advice, I think in terms of putting together the actual writing sample, I’ll sort of bring it back to our conversation around ordering and say, think about how ordering a writing sample can produce a narrative. So not just the content of the work itself, but think about whether or not, you know, poem A needs to actually go before poem D in order to create an emotional and conceptual experience that shows that you are cognizant of how you can distill a larger project into a smaller sampling. Take someone on a journey simply through ordering, I think can be a really powerful way of demonstrating that you’re able to think about projects as a cohesive whole, even if it’s, you know, 10 pages or 20 pages versus 60 pages. The other thing I would say too is to ask for help. I think, you know, none of this is really done in a vacuum. And if you’re fortunate enough to have a community of writers or trusted readers around you, send them a sample of work that you’re thinking about putting forward for these opportunities and get their feedback. Have them rank the poems, you know, one through 10 and see which ones folks consider to be the strongest. And then from there, think about  synthesizing that information and then again, taking advantage of how you might sequence them.Jo Reed: That is very good advice and thank you. I’m thanking you in advance for people who might be listening. I’m going to take a turn here because you have been, and will be again, a judge in the semifinals of Poetry Out Loud, which is the NEA’s poetry recitation competition. Tell me about that experience. How often have you done it?Leslie Sainz: Oh my gosh. I could talk about Poetry Out Loud for two hours. So I started… Well, actually, it goes a little bit further back than that because my first experience with Poetry Out Loud was when I was the outreach manager of the Hub City Writers Project based in Spartanburg, South Carolina. And we were one of the approved organizations that could put on one of the regional competitions. And so it was my job to organize that. And I had a blast doing it, and after I had won the NEA, I was approached by Lauren Miller, who I just adore and cannot shout out enough. Lauren reached out to me and asked if I would be interested in serving as a semifinals judge for the 2022 competition, which was actually virtual that year. And I had the most fun, which I think even in the virtual format, it was amazing the way the NEA accommodated that. And I was blown away by not just the professionalism of the organization, but also the professionalism of the students who had to record their performances, which, you know, for me, I imagine, would have been maybe even more nerve-wracking than performing them on a stage in D.C. But yeah, I just, I had so much fun doing it. And I, you know, the judging sessions take several hours. And I think I was just invigorated by the passion of these young students. I could have, you know, sat there on my laptop watching their pre-recorded videos for another three hours. I mean, it was so much fun.Jo Reed: I wonder if you’ve thought about, or in your own experiences, what you see happening when we actually learn a poem by heart. And I’m always even struck by the term “by heart”, because I think that’s very revelatory in itself.Leslie Sainz: Yes. Yeah, I completely agree with that. I think the thing about poetry, because it’s an oral and aural art form, traditionally, I think we really are meant to experience it in a bodily way. I think even the way a number of writers actually compose their pieces, myself included, when I write, I’m saying out loud the lines that I have on the page over and over again until I receive the next one. And then, now I tack on that other line, and I keep reading. And when folks memorize a poem, they embody it, not just in their performance of it, but the way that the language lives inside you, I think, is a profound act of love, which is where it returns to the heart, like you said.  I think the heart is a space of memory just as much as the brain is, and I think the capaciousness and the way it changes us is very much an important component of that process.Jo Reed: As we close, what are you currently working on? Are you working on new books or a new project? Or are you just relaxing into this collection, which was published in what, fall of 2023?Leslie Sainz: Yeah, so the book was published at the end of September. So it’s been about six months now. And, you know, I’m feeling rather restless. I’ve just started really tinkering with a new project, which is tentatively titled, “I Believe in Evil and Evil Believes in You.”  That’s actually a collection of persona poems written in the voice of Esther Hicks. And some folks are familiar with her work, but she is a American inspirational speaker and channeler, and a longtime proponent of the law of attraction. And she is often credited with kind of popularizing the concept of the law of attraction. And she claims that she can access this infinite intelligence titled Abraham, who shares with her the secret laws and knowledge of the universe that she then channels and shares in her books and in her workshops.Jo Reed: That will be very interesting, hands down.Leslie Sainz: Yeah, so definitely a departure.Jo Reed: I cannot wait to see what you do with that.Leslie Sainz: Yeah, it’s been fun. I think so much of the first collection, it’s so rooted in specific image systems. And I think with this next project, I was very excited to have nothing be off limits, I think, in terms of imagery. I can have a flying saucer, and I can have a microwave, and I can have a Pop-Tart, and I can have really anything enter that world. And so that freedom has been, I think, what has allowed me to return to the page with this kind of seriousness so quickly.Jo Reed: Leslie, I want to thank you so much. I loved your book and I loved our conversation, so many, many thanks.Leslie Sainz: Oh, thank you, Jo. Again, I’m blushing. I can’t believe I had the opportunity to speak with you about this. I’m so grateful.That was poet and 2021 NEA Literature Fellow Leslie Sainz. And, on April 17,  two days after our conversation, Leslie Sainz’s collection, Have You Been Long Enough at Table received the 2024 Audre Lorde Award for Lesbian Poetry!  You can keep up with Leslie at Leslie Sainz.com. And mark your calendars! The  Poetry Out Loud® National Finals will be held in Washington, DC, May 1-2, find out more at arts.gov. We’ll have links in our show notes.You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. 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Poet, travel writer, and playwright Nathalie Handal. Photo by Blair Prentice

“The world is the street I grew up on.” Poet, travel writer, and playwright Nathalie Handal was raised and educated all over the world — Latin America, the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and the United States. She still considers herself tri-continental, and her work is global in nature. She writes the literary travel column “The City and the Writer” for Words Without Borders; she is a literature and creative writing professor at New York University Abu Dhabi; and she is the author of ten award-winning collections, which have been translated into 15 languages. In addition to her poetry, Handal has written eight plays and is the editor of The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology, a collection of poetry from 83 Arab women poets, historic and contemporary. In the interview below, Handal discusses this groundbreaking collection, how it came into being, and the impact her multicultural upbringing has made on her creative process. National Endowment for the Arts: When did you begin writing, and when did you first consider yourself a writer? Nathalie Handal: My mother told me I’ve always been a storyteller. The mystifying nature of language captivated my curious mind as child. Poetry comes from what I don’t know, or know most deeply. I feel whole when I write so I’ve always considered myself a writer and have never stopped desiring the ways imagination dares me to explore freedom. Only when my first poems appeared in the British magazine Ambit, chosen by John Burnside, and then when Lucille Clifton was teaching me how to put a poetry book together, did I attain a clear view of myself as a writer in the world. NEA: Has your global upbringing and education influenced your work? How so? Handal: The world is the street I grew up on. It taught me to listen, to walk towards connections rather than get lost in division. It taught me courage. Courage is everything you cannot see in a literary work. I live a tri-continental life. This globality informs my writing and creative research, and helps me imagine poems, stories, and a tomorrow that is ethical, empathetic, expansive. In the Caribbean and Latin America, I became aware of the diversity of the Americas as well as the movements of the Levantine diaspora. In Europe, I discovered an East and a West, a North and a South, and the many post-colonial and the many migrant communities from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. In Asia and the Middle East, I constantly crossed vast cultures and languages, while many fixated on a narrow vision of the region. In the United States, I saw the communities of the world through the hyphen. An existential question about the nation lives in the politics of the hyphen. In New York City, I understood that though I am made of many global cities and seas, only in New York, I find the street I grew up on. NEA: Do your different writing practices—poetry, travel writing, and playwrighting—influence one another? How so? Handal: They inform each other, exist within each other. They show me writing can make anything. I am a poet in prose; a storyteller in poems; a traveler in every word. NEA: What distinguishes those practices for you? Handal: Poetry taught me the art of silence. Travel writing the art of stillness. Playwriting the art of life. NEA: What led you to edit The Poetry of Arab Women: A Contemporary Anthology? Handal: With less than three percent of literature in translation and having an international background, I felt a responsibility to participate in translation projects and the dissipation of global literature. Literature is dialogue, and I’ve always wanted to be part of the conversation as a writer and a literary activist. When I started The Poetry of Arab Women, I wasn’t aware of the colossal work it required. I wanted to eradicate the invisibility of Arab women poetry and introduce the diversity of their works. It was fundamental to unite Arab women poets regardless of where they were born, live, or what language they write in, as well as write a substantial introduction on Arab women’s literature and highlight the particularities of every Arab country. The introduction maps feminist movements and literary scenes, poetic commonalities and differences, as well as their varied socio-political contexts. NEA: What was the experience of putting this anthology together like? Where did you begin? Handal: It began in Paris where I was constantly at the Institut du monde arabe (Arab World Institute); as well as being inspired by the pioneering work and mentorship of Salma Khadra Jayyusi, founder and director of Project of Translation from Arabic (PROTA), a groundbreaking space for the translation of Arabic literature into English. Editing an anthology is not for those who lack fortitude or are faint-hearted. You have to embody the planner and the architect, the artisan and the painter. Every detail is monumental. NEA: The anthology showcases 83 poets. Are there any that didn’t make it into the book that you would also like readers to know about? They can be found in the W.W. Norton anthology I co-edited, Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from the Middle East, Asia, and Beyond. The book includes 450 poets from 61 countries writing in over 40 different languages, grouped thematically into nine sections that work against normative taxonomy. A conversation threaded across the continents. But so much continues to change at a faster pace. When I started, I was working via mail and fax. Now we can get an answer in an instant. It is a different literary landscape at all levels. NEA: You are the author of eight poetry collections, is there one that is a favorite of yours or you hold particularly close to your heart? Why? Handal: Every book is a voyage. Every voyage a return to the same place and to an unexpected elsewhere. Every book reminds me what makes loss bearable is that love is there too. The book I am working on is usually the one closest to my heart. NEA: Is there anything else you want to say about writing? Handal: Writing is pleasure and pain because we have to stay open to all that’s inside. Places and people never die for a writer. Yet we still find ourselves in a strange condition — trying to reassure ourselves of what once existed. And sometimes, we fear confronting our nostalgia, the crevices of our heart. But truth is essential. The lie never leaves. Like history, we end up having to address it, atone.

Leslie Sainz: For me, poetry feels like the closest thing that we have to time travel. I think because poetry is not beholden to the truth, like nonfiction or journalism, and it’s also not beholden to sense, like most contemporary prose, I think it is able to use sort of the absurdities and expansiveness of its form to allow us to move through time in different ways. And I think that has always astonished me and is certainly what keeps me going, because it feels like poetry can and has taken me everywhere and anywhere.

Co-hosted by BAVC Media and National Endowment for the ArtsThis IMAG virtual meeting is part of a quarterly series offering a national forum for ideas exchange, peer learning, and technical assistance to deepen connectivity between existing independent film and media arts networks, organizations, and collectives across the United States. Intended for those working to strengthen communities through the power of storytelling or build accessible and equitable career pathways into the film and media arts industry, this meeting is suitable for individual artists, arts collectives and networks, arts and non-arts organizations, arts service organizations, industry leaders, arts educators, local/regional/state arts entities and beyond!

Jo Reed: Welcome to Quick Study. I’m Josephine Reed. This is the monthly podcast from the National Endowment for the Arts, where we’ll share stats and stories to help us better understand the value of art in everyday life. Sunil Iyengar is the pilot of Quick Study, and he’s the Director of Research and Analysis here at the Arts Endowment. Good morning, Sunil.Sunil Iyengar: Good morning, Jo.Jo Reed: Okay, what’s on your docket for today?Sunil Iyengar:  Well, you and I have had several episodes now where we’ve talked about the role of the arts in health, and we’ve described studies dealing with individual or community well-being associated with the arts, or even such emergent phenomena as social prescribing. We’ve also talked recently about the Surgeon General’s interest in how the arts can help to combat social isolation and loneliness.Jo Reed: Yes, and this has clearly been a priority for our Chair, Maria Rosario-Jackson.Sunil Iyengar: Indeed, but we’ve really rarely, if ever, looked at what other countries, outside maybe the U.S. and the U.K., are doing when it comes to infusing some of this research into cultural practice and policy. So today, I was hoping we could dive into a report by a membership group called the Global Cultural Districts Network. The network, or GCDN, was launched more than a decade ago by the firm AEA Consulting. It’s come along quite a bit, and now they’ve engaged the freelance author Rosie Dow to produce a substantial report titled Culture for Health, Implications and Opportunities for Cultural Districts.Jo Reed: That sounds really interesting to me. What countries are they examining?Sunil Iyengar: So members of the Global Cultural Districts Network, according to their website, run to 57 or so districts, several in the U.S., of course, but also in Canada, the Caribbean, the U.K., parts of Europe, Asia, Australia, and the Middle East, all various sites on those continents. Membership is defined as organizations who are responsible for, quote, “conceiving, funding, building, operating areas and cities with a significant cultural element.”Jo Reed: How are they defining cultural districts?Sunil Iyengar: Well, we’re obviously familiar with that term here at the NEA, right, where municipalities or neighborhoods or community organizations work with artists and designers and maybe preservation societies to designate spaces for historic purposes or for arts and entertainment venues or for cultural tourism. Our Creative Placemaking Grants Program for Our Town, for example, supports many of these, as do grants we make to local arts agencies, for example, or through funding that goes through state and regional arts agencies. In terms of the GCDN, they don’t offer a hard and fast definition of cultural districts. Instead, they say that cultural districts function in, quote, “a wide range of geographies and operational realities, and they often have unique place-based relationships with societal, environmental, and economic issues they seek to address.” I know that all sounds fairly abstract.Jo Reed: Yeah, it kind of does, but I get it. Go on.Sunil Iyengar: Yeah, so to begin with, this report came about because the network was presented with research findings by Daisy Fancourt, an epidemiologist at University College London and her team. I’ve spoken with, here, on this podcast about some of Dr. Fancourt’s work before. Through the analysis of long longitudinal data sets and from a scoping review she did for the World Health Organization, she’s arrived at conclusions that form the starting point for this new report. Those conclusions, according to the GCDN, are threefold. One, targeted arts projects for certain groups may help improve people’s mental health. Two, engaging in arts and culture in the broadest sense is linked to better mental and physical health across the lifespan. The third principle that they derive from her work is there are currently significant social, economic, and demographic barriers and inequalities in people’s access to arts and culture.Jo Reed: Can you back up just a bit, because you say that this report about cultural districts uses those findings as a starting point. Can you explain how they did this?Sunil Iyengar: Sure. Back in May of last year, the network held a series of focus groups around the UK study findings, and they unpacked what those findings mean for cultural districts worldwide. Most of the reactions were positive. Participating cultural district leaders saw real value in organizing their work more strategically within a public health framework. But I thought I’d highlight a few of the network’s observations that I found slightly different than what might have been expected. They are, in brief, some points of tension.Jo Reed: Before you go on, can you give me an example of who would be considered a cultural district leader?Sunil Iyengar: Yes. When I use the term, I refer to policymakers, planners, and executives who the network says come from widely different “international contexts, all working at the intersection of culture and sustainable urban development,” in their words. So that’s what I mean by cultural district leader. It’s not always the same type of individual because many of these districts are organized in different ways and supported in different ways. But, anyway, about the points of tension I was referring to, although many arts and cultural district leaders felt their contributions already to be linked in some way with greater public health, and even though other leaders said they now may think of moving in this direction, there was some potential discomfort with narratives that support the idea that the arts must have benefit, that’s a direct quote, such as health.Jo Reed: I see. So they’re concerned about the arts being only for arts’ sake.Sunil Iyengar: Yeah, somewhat. I mean, it’s an age-old policy question, whether it’s enough to champion the so-called intrinsic value of the arts, Jo. According to this report, there may have been some wariness among cultural district leaders in assuming that the arts always have to have a measurable benefit for people, whether we’re talking about education, employment, the economy or, indeed, health. In fact, some focus group members expressed the sentiment that the UK research results being so strong, it might be possible for arts and cultural districts to go on doing what they’re doing without deliberately addressing public health in their own strategies and still kind of reap the overall benefit in terms of well-being for communities.Jo Reed: That’s interesting. What else did they say?Sunil Iyengar: Well, another area of inquiry for the focus groups was communications. What role should cultural districts play in messaging the plausible health benefits of their work to policymakers and the public? I think there was some recognition here that any argument positing that, quote, all arts are good for health casts the net too wide and may require more resource-intensive partnerships or research investments to back up such claims. Now, the case might be different if the cultural district is pursuing a specific health outcome or aiming to service a specific health condition or population, but in general, the report describes some focus group participants feeling that an arts-and-health frame may divert fundraising from core activities of the district. They pointed out that often the funding they receive will cover only short-term projects, so it may even be irresponsible of them to tackle something as broad as positive health outcomes for an entire community without being able to operate in a longer time frame.Jo Reed: Oh, I can see that because it takes time, a lot of time, for some of these changes to come about, to be able to measure them.Sunil Iyengar: That’s certainly right, as we know from research. This concern leads into another one. This is an almost existential question for us in cultural policy and arts funding, which is how to provide long-term support that aligns with the types of systems change that may be necessary, not only to achieve positive outcomes for a community, but also to broaden access to arts participation. Focus group participants stressed how capital investments for buildings and physical structures can often be easier than this kind of change. City policymakers can be crucial for these undertakings, but at the same time, cultural district leaders have expressed frustration at having to navigate changing political winds when having to affect systems change. On the other hand, there can also be clear risks in courting private developers for such projects since profit motives must take the upper hand in those cases. So that all complicates the work of cultural district leaders, certainly.Jo Reed: Yeah, I can absolutely see that. I wonder if the report features any examples of cultural districts where this work is done in an innovative way, for example.Sunil Iyengar: Yeah, the report, and this is one of the nice things, is the report does include many little examples of how cultural districts are trying to broaden access to arts participation as part of public health. One I liked was how in Munich, Germany, something called cultural passport is given to everyone when they turn 18, which provides free access to cultural events. Now, according to some focus group participants, even this example and others where free access is given for arts attendance raised questions as to whether people will spend time with the arts long or deeply if they don’t pay for it. There was also talk about how to, quote, “balance breadth and depth in subsidizing access to arts participation.” So maybe there’s more questions here than answers, but I really think the report makes you think about these matters in a helpful way.Jo Reed: I agree, but I have questions about that because I know when I go to a museum, for example, or a gallery, after 90 minutes, it’s almost as though I stopped seeing. I’ve taken in as much as I possibly can. And at the same time, we’re privileged to live in Washington DC where so many of the museums are free– and it’s a real joy to pop in to look at one painting for 20 minutes.Sunil Iyengar: Definitely– you’re not going to hear me oppose that strategy, but, I will say that even just going back to research, there does seem to be value that spills over in other forms of arts participation. Years ago, there’s been a term coined, the omnivore theory of arts participation, that people who engage in one form of art and do it intensively may very well see the value and may just gravitate to other art forms and other ways of engaging with the arts. Certainly, if you have, it seems to me, a smorgasbord of opportunities in any given district, there’s almost a more equals more theory, right?. I don’t know if that sounds circular, but, certainly, it’s helpful to think about this conversation about breadth versus depth, and I’m glad they raised it in the report.Jo Reed: I agree. So you’re right: so many more questions, but we like that. We like those questions.Sunil Iyengar: Right. What would we do for a podcast otherwise?Jo Reed: Exactly. Sunil, thank you so much. And I’ll talk to you next time.Sunil Iyengar: Great, Jo, thanks.Jo Reed: That was Sunil Iyengar. He’s the Director of Research and Analysis here at the National Endowment for the Arts. You’ve been listening to Quick Study. The music is We Are One from Scott Holmes Music. It’s licensed through Creative Commons. Until next month, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

Join Media Arts staff from the National Endowment for the Arts for an office hours-style session. Please register in advance.After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.Closed captioning will be available. Should you need other reasonable accommodations, please send your request to events@arts.gov by Tuesday, July 2nd.

Join Media Arts staff from the National Endowment for the Arts for an office hours-style session. Please register in advance.After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.Closed captioning will be available. Should you need other reasonable accommodations, please send your request to mediaarts@arts.gov by Tuesday, June 4th.

Nicole London. Photo by Burroughs Lamar 

Emmy Award-winning and Grammy-nominated producer and director Nicole London’s journey into the world of filmmaking was unconventional yet deeply rooted in her profound connection to media. As London reflected on her path, she said, “I actually wasn’t drawn to the world of filmmaking so much as I was drawn to the world of television!” Initially pursuing a pre-med major in college, London’s fascination with television led her to broadcasting school in Baltimore, Maryland. Her trajectory took a pivotal turn when she ventured into the realm of documentary filmmaking, inspired by her experience as a personal assistant to a seasoned filmmaker.London has carved out her own filmmaking path through her work on documentary films, such as The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, which earned an Exceptional Merit In Documentary Filmmaking Emmy nomination in 2016. She served as the producer for Miles Davis: Birth of the Cool, receiving a Grammy nomination for Best Music Film in 2020 and winning the 2021 News & Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Arts and Culture Documentary. In 2021, London’s contributions were recognized at the 22nd Annual African American Women In Cinema Film Festival, where she was honored as a Trailblazer.When asked about her own mission statement as a filmmaker, London said, “to illuminate the Black experience in all its myriad forms, to provoke thought and inspire action.” With these guiding principles, London embarked on her latest endeavor, directing the upcoming National Endowment for the Humanities- and NEA-supported documentary The Disappearance of Miss Scott, featured on the Public Broadcasting Service television series American Masters.Hazel Scott (1920-1981) is an unsung icon of Hollywood and a trailblazer in her own right. London’s decision to direct the documentary was fueled by a desire to bring Scott’s legacy to light. “It’s shocking that a film hasn’t been done about Hazel Scott before,” London said. “Here is a true maverick—a woman who was one half of what arguably was the first Black power couple, a virtuoso pianist, a trailblazer in film and on the performance stage, the first Black woman to host her own television show, an often-solo crusader for civil rights, a defiant challenger to the smears of McCarthyism. Who wouldn’t want to be the first to commit her story to film?”

Studio still of Hazel Scott in the movie Rhapsody in Blue. Photo by Warner Bros.

As London delved into the creative process—seeking out individuals who knew Scott personally, including relatives—she aimed to capture the breadth and impact of Scott’s life and achievements. “I especially hope her story emboldens young Black women and all women to stand up for themselves in every field, to keep kicking open doors for their sisters to follow through,” she said.

Tammy Kernodle (left) and Thomas Kaufman (right) on the set of The Disappearance of Miss Scott. Photo by Nicole London

With the documentary currently in post-production, London shared that the most important lesson she took from Scott’s legacy was “the way Hazel Scott used her platform and influence to advocate for social justice and civil rights. The fact that she most often stood alone in the fight—that was so powerful to me. That ability to remain resilient and overcome obstacles, it’s an example to draw strength from.” Looking ahead, London envisions the film as a catalyst—for works from future Broadway shows to biopics—for broader recognition and exploration of Scott’s life.For aspiring filmmakers who are creating their own lane, London shared the following three pieces of advice: “Embrace discomfort, refrain from comparing journeys, and above all, keep going.”

Music Credits: “NY” composed and performed by Kosta T, from the cd Soul Sand, used courtesy of the Free Music PodcastJo Reed: From the National Endowment for the Arts, this is Art Works, I’m Josephine ReedSuzan-Lori Parks: I tell people that with “Sally & Tom”, that I put two things I love very much, history, specifically American history, and theater, and I put them in a super collider and it’s like a smash up, mash up. Boom! And we see what happens, and it’s a lot of fun. We’ve been having a lot of fun with the show. Jo Reed: Oh, there are moments that are truly, truly funny and then moments that are absolutely not, and you juggled that so well. Suzan-Lori Parks: Thank you. Jo Reed: Today, we dive into the world of theater, history, and the act of creation through the lens of the MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer-Prize winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks or SLP who has a unique ability to intertwine the complexities of American history with the vibrant energy of theater, creating works that challenge, entertain, and provoke thought. And this is particularly true of her current play “Sally and Tom” now having its New York premiere at the Public Theater where SLP is playwright in residence.  A meta play about a theater company putting on a play about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson, “Sally and Tom” is a fascinating exploration of theater, history, and the power of storytelling, and it exemplifies SLP’s talent for sparking nuanced conversations about America’s past and present. I had the enormous pleasure of speaking with Suzan-Lori Parks and I began our conversation by asking her to tell us a little more about “Sally and Tom.” Suzan-Lori Parks: Sure, let’s see, if I get it right. “Sally & Tom” concerns a theater troupe, a low budget, no budget theater troupe. They call themselves Good Company. They’re putting on a play about Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson. Sally Hemings, of course, being, among other things, the mother of seven children, and also one of the enslaved people owned by Thomas Jefferson, one of our great founding fathers, who was also a brilliant writer, and an architect also. But yeah, so they’re putting on a play. One of the things it’s about, we could say, is, well, there’s a lot of love in the play, “Sally & Tom”, but the story of Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson is not your traditional love story. There’s love there, but the play, “Sally & Tom”, really takes a look at how we have a lot of joy when we are making things, or as I say in a note, how we are making the stuff that nightmares are made on. So there’s a lot of fun in the play. There’s a lot of joy. There’s a lot of love. There’s a lot of love between the characters, but it’s not your traditional “Everybody, hurrah, America!” It’s let’s celebrate America. Let’s really celebrate America. Let’s respect America. Let’s take another look at America with love, with devotion, and there are a lot of tough conversations you got to have when you’re loving someone or something, and that’s what we’re having in “Sally & Tom.”. Jo Reed: Well, the play absolutely deals with very difficult and fraught issues; enslavement and its traces still on this country, a man with an enlightened philosophy who actually can live with owning people.  There’s rape, there’s sexual consent, and there’s the coexistence, but very different experiences of a Black family and a white family who are living together. But you insist on a nuanced conversation about all of this, even as you focus like a laser on the facts of the case. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes. I think nuanced conversations, the ability to have nuanced conversations will be our salvation as a culture, really. If we haven’t been working those muscles, maybe they’ve gotten a little slack, because we’ve had our gadgets in our hands too much, or all you’ve been lifting is the remote, some of you. But I do think that the ability to develop the nuanced conversation, that’s going to really, really be the thing that allows us to move forward as a world culture, as a universal culture. Just the ability to listen, the ability to hear, the ability to say the things that need to be said, the ability to invite people to the table, the ability to invite people to the table, the ability to see yourself in a new light, to extend your hand, whether it’s to someone that you’d call the other, or someone across the aisle, or someone across a crowded room, those kind of just basic human skills, people. Yes, in “Sally & Tom”, we practice them all. The Good Company, the theater troupe practices them, not without difficulty. And the folks in 1790 also practiced them, yeah. Jo Reed: Yeah, no one ever said it was easy. Suzan-Lori Parks: No. Jo Reed: One thing I just loved is that there are, what, eight performers? Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes, there are eight performers. Jo Reed: Every one of them, even the ones who don’t have that much stage time, they’re all so vivid. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes. Jo Reed: That’s a combination of your writing and their performances. That’s wonderful. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, so we have the best actors in the universe, and “Sally & Tom” is a play where each character, no matter what their station is, their station in life, whether they’re the lead or the not lead, each character has a journey, a very significant journey. Each character receives an invitation to the table, if you will, is allowed in the room, gets to have a series of moments. It’s the practice of inclusivity, and that’s what it looks like. It just makes everything so much more vibrant and beautiful, in life as in theater. In life as in art. Jo Reed: And that certainly–Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes, sorry. It’s–Jo Reed: No, not at all. It certainly felt that way in the audience. Suzan-Lori Parks: Oh, yay.Jo Reed: You have three powerful monologues in this play. Suzan-Lori Parks: Thank you. Jo Reed: By Thomas, by James, who’s Sally’s brother, and a valet to Thomas Jefferson, and is also an enslaved person. And then finally, Sally herself. They’re very different. They’re very interesting. With James, he’s talking to Thomas Jefferson. Whereas Sally and Thomas are talking to us, the audience, I think. Talk about that, and creating those monologues. Which one did you start with? Suzan-Lori Parks: My writing is very much a spiritual practice. So the person who let me in was Thomas Jefferson. Thomas Jefferson let me in.  He was the first one that I wrote. His monologue isn’t the first one in the play. But to be able to see him, see beyond the carved-in-stone monument that so many of us– we revere him, we respect him, and we only see him in this one kind of way, a lot of us. Others only see him in another kind of way, the “Ah, how could he do such things?” There’s truth in both aspects of him, and that’s what makes him, I think, an interesting character, and a character worth listening to. So he speaks a lot about his achievements, and his talents, and his skills, and his curiosities. I mean, he’s a man who remodeled, he says, almost every house he lived in. Putting a dome on Monticello was one of his achievements. Also, he’s a very great writer. That’s something. But the monologue doesn’t stop there. It also talks about the depth of his emotion, which he, in the monologue, talks about being literally at sea, surrounded by nothing but water, surrounded by nothing but tears. This is a different way to look at Thomas Jefferson. In “Sally & Tom”, we don’t only humanize the enslaved people. We also humanize the people who owned slaves. Both things are happening. Jo Reed: Yeah, when I was in the theater, I was thinking of the Jefferson quote, “When I think that God is just, I fear for my country.”  You don’t quote that exactly, but that’s really explored, I think, in that monologue. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah. Rightfully so, he is proud of his accomplishments and reminds us that he is at the great intersection of the way we see our country, and that’s very important. Then, of course, Sally’s, I think, monologue I wrote next, her monologue comes at the end of the play. In a way, she’s remembering things about her life in the sort of spiritual tradition of you remember things, you bring the body back together, literally remembering things, and you remember things in a way to, she says, “Cast the burden.” It’s a spiritual activity of casting the burden. Meaning recalling things as a way to let them go. We say in spiritual conversations, “I cast the burden and I set myself free.” The contemporary characters quote more than once the esteemed scholar and educator, Mary McLeod Bethune, who says “Forgiveness is not forgetting, it’s letting go of the hurt.” So we’re not talking about covering up anything or papering over anything. We’re talking about recalling things so that we can let them go and move forward as a people, as a country, as a group of folks. And then James’s speech, I think I wrote last, but it comes first in the play, and it’s a great point of examination and contention for both the characters in 1790, and the characters in the contemporary day. Because the question of his speech, which is eloquent and passionate and gorgeous, and he says all the things that need to be said to the man, to Thomas Jefferson. And yet the question in “Sally & Tom” is, is there a place for that kind of talking in our world? Jo Reed: That brings us very nicely to the fact that this is meta theatrical.   So let’s talk about what that allowed you to do. I think that speech is a perfect example of that. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, we’re writing a play about writing a play. James Baldwin, the great scholar, writer, activist, James Baldwin. I had the great fortune of studying creative writing with him at Hampshire College. I was at Mount Holyoke College as an undergrad. In the early ‘80s, Mr. Baldwin taught creative writing at Hampshire College. I took what he said was his first creative writing class he ever taught. There I was with 14 other students around a library-sized table, learning, as I say, how to conduct myself in the presence of the spirit, how to pay attention, how to show up. One of his wonderful things he would say in his writing is: “We are trapped in history and history is trapped in us.” So, a play that’s about playwriting and a play that’s about playmaking, “Sally & Tom”, to me, is very much about how the world is made. Like Shakespeare, “All the world’s a stage.” Or Hamlet would say, “hold a mirror up to nature”. So, writing a play about playwriting, I’m really engaging in a conversation about how the world is made. As Luce says late in the play, “We’re making the world, we’re not just living in it.” How each character in the play, how each of us as human beings in the world, how we make the world every day through our actions, how the characters in “Sally & Tom” are making the world every moment through their actions. Some things are scripted, some are not. Some things need to be re-scripted because of things that happen. What that allows for the characters in the play is to perhaps discover some trapdoor. So instead of just history being trapped in them and them being trapped in history, the meta-theatricality of the play allows for us to find trapdoors, us to find ways out, us to find crossroads of compassion, us to find clearings where we can dance and sing or weep, as the whatever the new– places where we can find freedom, where we can claim freedom, where we can celebrate history. That’s not just saying “Yay, yay, yay! It’s all good!” You celebrate history by falling on your knees and weeping, and that’s okay. We have to embrace those kinds of moments in our culture. It’s okay to weep. It’s okay to say “Gee, I was great, but I might not be as great as I might’ve been.” To respect yourself enough to look again at yourself, to rehearse, re-hear your own words. All that has happened in the play. It’s a lot, but it’s fun! It’s fun. Jo Reed: All props to the director, because everybody is embodying multiple characters, and at the same time, it’s always very clear who’s who on that stage. Suzan-Lori Parks: Oh, thank you, Josephine. It’s Steve H. Broadnax III. We call him SHB3, is a brilliant director. This is the first time we’ve worked together. We worked together initially at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis when we did “Sally & Tom” there a couple of years ago. That’s where we had the world premiere. I’m so thrilled to be in collaboration with Steve H. Broadnax. Of course, he’s done “Thoughts of a Colored Man” on Broadway. He’s very esteemed. He is such a joy to work with, and when it’s game time, brother Broadnax comes in and says “Okay, everybody, it’s game time!” Everybody knows what that means. So, there can be a joy in making, in pursuing excellence and in attaining excellence, and that’s what we do every day in the room.Jo Reed: I was going to say, and a joy in paying attention. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, right? There is a joy in paying attention. There is a joy in showing up. The first award I got as a child, I was in either kindergarten or first grade. Anyway, I still have the little plaque that they gave me. It was for perfect attendance, and I love that. I have the little plaque on my bookshelf, “Perfect attendance.” I said “Yeah, that’s what I’m going to be doing. I’m going to be showing up.” Jo Reed: Well, collaboration is so key in theater and I’m just curious how the collaboration worked with the director and with the actors in “Sally & Tom”? Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes. In “Sally & Tom”, Steve and I worked very closely together. In the rehearsal room, of course, I defer to him when he’s giving direction to an actor because he is highly skilled in the language, in transmitting the text to the actors, the blocking to the actors, what the set will look like, all those wonderful things. I oftentimes stand by his elbow and say “Hey, could we try this? Shall we try this?” He’ll communicate that to the actor because that’s the most effective way to help them understand it. And yet, I’ve got a million and one ideas about things. I mean, we say we get in each other’s lanes all the time. So I’ll have ideas about staging and all that kind of thing that are transmitted and that you see on stage, and he has plenty of ideas about the text, and you’ll see in the text. One day, he and I were talking, and I said “Oh, I want to articulate what Good Company is trying to do. They’re trying to reach a wider audience.” He said “A whiter audience?!” We laughed, we burst out laughing. I said “Steve, it’s going in the play!” So we put it in the play and now it’s in a scene with Luce and Mike, and it’s a really funny moment. But also, the actors, you’ll see a moment in the play, in “Sally & Tom”, where the actors are throwing ideas into the pot. Good Company’s throwing ideas in the pot. That happened, plenty of times, I would make a joke, like “What you say might end up in the play.” That happened less. But in terms of overall, the structure, the main story, the bones, the basic architecture is very much my responsibility. I delight in that. There is a hierarchy. Collaboration’s great and there is a hierarchy. Sometimes people would be talking, and I’m like “Quiet please, the writer is in the room, and the writer is writing.” So, things like that, but it’s all understood. I also don’t jump on stage and perform for them. I would ask them to do something. So it’s collaboration with an understanding of what your department is, what my department is, what your lane is, what my lane is. Jo Reed: These characters live in your head, and they live on the page. Can you tell me about that moment when you actually see them embodied on the stage? Suzan-Lori Parks: It’s an absolute joy. So far in my career, I have not been one of those writers who– I mean, I talk to some of my friends and colleagues, they’re disappointed: “Oh, it’s not as good as I had in my head.” For me, so far, I have been the opposite; it’s always a lot better than I imagine in my head. I mean, the costumes! I think I wrote this play for the costumes, really. Every character has a really pretty costume. No, that’s silly. Of course, I didn’t. But at the same time, I did write in the script, notes to the design. One character, Maggie, says “Because my costume is killer.” So that was a note, a hint to production that we wanted awesome costumes, which Rodrigo definitely gives us some of the most beautiful outfits. It’s just so much better than I had in my head, of course, because the actors are so great, and the set is beautiful. I sat watching the show yesterday afternoon and was just so pleased and happy for the company that we have managed to get the show to this beautiful, beautiful place. Jo Reed: I’d like to just briefly touch on your relationship with music, because there’s such musicality in your language. I mean, in this conversation, certainly in your work, and you’ve written music. Your play, “Plays for the Plague Year”, what did you write, 25 songs for it? Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, “Plays for the Plague Year”, what a joy that was. We premiered, world premiere at Joe’s Pub last year, I guess it was? We won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Music in a Play. Yeah, I wrote 20, 25 songs for it. Maybe we actually performed maybe 20. Words and music, I write. I have a band called Sula and the Joyful Noise, and we are performing all around town, and out of town too. We were a six-piece band with a horn section. I was a songwriter before I was a playwright. Jo Reed: That’s what I was going to ask you. Did music come first? Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, music came first. In my experience, writing was a safer space, we could say, than the world of music. So I ended up gravitating more toward just writing plays and novels and things like that, and then have in the past 20 years, or 15 years, allowed myself to step back into my songwriter space, and I’m having a wonderful time. Working with musicians is very different. Being in a band, having my horn section, and my husband’s a bass player, and we’ve got drums and a vibraphone player. It’s intense. It’s very different from being the playwright sitting in the house giving notes, that kind of thing.Jo Reed: I bet, yeah. Can you tell me just a little bit about your background, where you’re from? Suzan-Lori Parks: Sure. My dad was in the army. He was a career army officer. It’s funny, my mom just told me recently, he joined the army in ROTC. He came from a very economically disadvantaged situation, and the army had just been integrated. That was the only way he was going to get to college. He wanted badly to go to college, and the family, his family did not have any kind of money. So he joined the ROTC as a way to get to college. So he graduated from college and then was a career army officer. My mom was a college professor, sociology, and later, oral history. We moved all around the country. We lived in Germany for a good amount of time. My parents, in their wisdom, they sent me to German school. All the American kids are going to American school, they sent me and my brother to German school. Not only were we the only Black kids in the school, but we had to learn German, which came in handy, of course, as learning a language always does. Also, because now my husband is German, so we speak German around the house. But that’s it. Jo Reed: How did you get involved in playwriting? Suzan-Lori Parks: So there I was studying creative writing with James Baldwin in this creative writing class in the early ‘80s. As people know, in a creative writing class, it will be your turn to present your work. Usually, the students would sit at the table and very brilliantly read in a modest voice their works. For some reason, and I don’t know why, but I would always read like this, “And then she ran across the field, and she picked up the cotton candy, and she said ‘Oh my God!’.” I would be doing that. I do not know why. Maybe because I was a singer songwriter who wasn’t singing songs, but I was kind of singing the song. But anyway, I would perform my short stories, and at one point after class, Mr. Baldwin said “Miss. Parks, have you ever thought about writing for the theater?” I was like “No, sir, I haven’t.” In my mind, in my little tummy, I thought “Oh no, he’s trying to tell me that I suck as a writer.” Because it’s like “Get me to a theater!” That kind of thing. I thought “Oh no!” Because I didn’t like theater, what I knew of theater, again, it was the ‘80s, it was all the people I knew who did theater, I was at Mount Holyoke College, and they were all from New York City, and they all talked like this, “Oh darling, darling, darling.” They were all from New York City. So there was a lot of faking going on. There was a lot of affect, and a lot of “Ugh,” this kind of behavior. I was like “I am not like that. I’m real. I like real things! ,” like that. So I didn’t think the theater was a place for me. Although, riding the bus home that evening back to my dorm, I started writing my first play, because I thought “Well, it’s Mr. Baldwin. It’s James Baldwin. I might as well give it a try.” It’s like I’m still trying my hand at writing for the theater. It’s just continued. So that’s how I got into it, yeah. Jo Reed: Well, yeah, it’s interesting because, okay, so with “Plays for the Plague Year”, 25 songs, it’s like a theatrical concert. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes.Jo Reed: We have the meta play going on with “Sally & Tom”, and then you did “365 Plays / 365 Days”, a play a day for a year. It’s almost like you’re continually creating new structures for your work. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes. Strange, isn’t it? Yeah, no, thank you for acknowledging that. Yeah, for “Plays for the Plague Year”, yeah, I just sat down and wrote a play a day as a way to just– I wanted us to have something with which we could celebrate when we got back together. When I started writing those plays, of course, we were all in lockdown. Getting back together was not a sure thing. But I felt like “Well, I’ll write something and then when we get back together, we’ll have a song to sing together,” if you will. A song of days, all the days. I would just listen to the news, or read the news, or whatever, and write a play about something that caught my eye. Yes, and as you pointed out, it was very much like in 2002, I guess it was, when I started and I wrote a play a day for a year. That was just as a way to say thank you to theater, because it had given me so much. I’d won the Pulitzer Prize several months before, and I was just saying “Thank you,” by just showing up. Again, attendance, perfect attendance. Showing up every day and writing a little play as a way to say thank you. With “Plays for the Plague Year”, it was showing up every day as a way to say “Attitude of gratitude while we’re in this difficult place.” Anytime I would write a song, I would throw it in. I wrote a song when I heard that Chadwick Boseman died. I wrote a song for Chadwick Boseman called “R.I.P. The King”. Or a song when John Lewis died, as the mourners crossed the Pettus Bridge with his casket, they shouted “We got it from here.” So I wrote a song called “We Got It from Here”. Or there was a song for John Prine I wrote, because he also passed away during that time. So, songs would come up like that and I’d just throw them in, and not even knowing if we’d ever come back together. And then we came back together, Oskar Eustis at the Public Theater said “Well, why don’t you put them on?” I said “Really?” He said “Sure! You wrote a part for the writer, why don’t you be the writer?” I’m like “Oh, okay.” So there I was in Joe’s Pub performing the play,five, six nights a week with a wonderful group of actors. Directed by Nigel Smith. Great direction. Great to work with Nigel Smith.. Jo Reed: I mean, your whole career is extraordinary, but you’ve really had a couple of extraordinary years. Suzan-Lori Parks: Thank you.Jo Reed: “Topdog/Underdog”, your Pulitzer Prize winning play, was recently revived on Broadway. What a revival that was. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes, what a joy. Again, another director, another wonderful director, Kenny Leon, and two brilliant and beautiful and generous and kind and loving actors, Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II. Just splendid, splendid brothers. Righteous brothers. The kind of actors that you want to work with. I would sit in rehearsal,  when we got into the Golden Theatre, which is a beautiful theater on Broadway, I would shout in rehearsal, they were doing the play, and I’d go “Sing the song!” like that. Because they were up there, so brilliant, so wonderful, so inclusive, because it’s a play about two dudes in a room. But they were just very inclusive to my thoughts and my contributions, not just because I was the writer, but because they value the opinion of women, which is a great thing in a man, yeah. Jo Reed: You were the first African-American woman to win a Pulitzer Prize for drama back in 2002. I’m wondering, when you think about it, when you think about the past 22 years, what changes you’ve observed in theater? Suzan-Lori Parks: I mean, fortunately for world culture, I think it’s become more inclusive. I think it’s become more diverse. These words are sometimes hot-button issues and triggering for people, on both sides of the aisle, if you will. I think the spirit is generous and loving and encourages inclusion, even when it’s difficult, and encourages respect, and encourages understanding, and encourages kindness. These are the truths that I hold to be self-evident. Show up, be kind, don’t save your kindness for just the higher ups. Kindness should be shared and spread, and it’s not easy to do every day. But anyway, so I do think that theater has become more open and engaging and more joyous, and it also is allowing us to take a look at some things that perhaps we haven’t had a chance to look at yet. Inviting in the voices of, we would say, underserved communities. There are plays on Broadway…. well, last year, you can see “The Thanksgiving Play”, or “Fat Ham”, or alongside  “The Piano Lesson”, and “Death of a Salesman”, and  “Good Night, Oscar.”  So there’s a whole wonderful offering. I mean, and this is just me, but I think that the world is hungry for daily bread, meaning sustenance, meaning food that feeds you in a deep way, and not just cash money bread. I would ask theater, as we continue to be inclusive and expansive, not just to go for the cash money bread, the entertainment dollars, but also to find ways to continue to innovate, and find ways where we can offer audiences daily bread, and not to abandon the offering of daily bread in the pursuit of cash money bread. In a way, to bring it back to “Sally & Tom”, that’s one thing that begins to happen with Good Company. The play that they’re performing is originally called “E Pluribus Unum”, “Out of Many, One.” The producer doesn’t like the title so much. The writer, Luce, lands on a title that’s more appealing all around, to herself included, which is called “Pursuit of Happiness”. So the understanding of “Out of Many, One” is, I would say, discarded for the endless yearning of “The Pursuit of Happiness”. So it’s just interesting. So I would hope that as theater, as the arts, as the world continues to expand, as the universe continues to expand, that we can find ways to continue to deliver to each other daily bread. Jo Reed: You are a playwright-in-residence at the Public Theater. What does this experience allow you to do? Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah. As a human person, I traveled around so much as a kid, and so people say “Where are you from?” Like Johnny Cash, “I’m from everywhere.” But I traveled around so much that I never really felt like I had a home. I mean, always living with, of course, my parents, but never really having a home. I feel like being the writer-in-residence at the Public Theater has allowed me to have an artistic home and to put down roots and to have a seat, in the good way. If we were ever to hang out, Josephine, you’d see, I’m one of those people who does not sit down. I’m always dancing around. I’m always in the back of the theater, dancing around, watching the show. But to take your seat in the way that the scripture or that the books talk about taking your seat and knowing that you have a place that is for you, and the strength that comes from that, and the daring that I’ve continued to exercise, because I have a seat, because I have a chair at the Public Theater, which is a theater coming when I was coming up, I always– like “Wow, it’s the Public Theater.” I still feel that way, “Wow, it’s the Public Theater.” Because so many great artists have come through that theater. I had my first play there in 1994, 30 years ago, when George C. Wolfe was the artistic director of the Public Theater, a show in the Martinson where “Sally and Tom” is now, called “The America Play” about a Lincoln impersonator. A Black man who dressed up as Abraham Lincoln. So that was 30 years ago in the Martinson at the Public Theater with George C. Wolfe as the artistic director. Let’s see, Liz Diamond was the director of that play, and now 30 years later, there is another play about history and America, which features people dressing up as historical characters. It’s my jam, yeah . Jo Reed: Well, one thing you do at the Public Theater is Watch Me Work. Suzan-Lori Parks: Oh, thank you for mentioning that . Jo Reed: Can you explain that and what it is you do and how it works ? Suzan-Lori Parks: Yes, thank you, Josephine. Oh, it’s one of my great joys. Watch Me Work, I started it about 14 years ago. A dramaturg friend of mine who, at that time, worked at the Public Theater, Jesse Cameron Alick, was doing a theater festival, I think on East 4th Street, in some little theaters on East 4th Street. Jesse said “Okay, SLP, I’ve got a lot of plays on the docket already by young writers, and I’d love to include a play by–” and I said “Oh, by an old writer?” We laughed. I said “Okay, man.” I just started talking; it was unscripted. It was a very weird moment. I opened my mouth and I said “Jesse, I do not have time to write a play for you, but I tell you what I’ll do. I’ll sit in front of the audience with my red typewriter, and we will work together for 20 minutes. For the remaining time in the show, I will take questions from them about their creative process, and we will call it Watch Me Work.” It was like something was speaking through me in that moment. So, we started it, in a little theater festival, and then we quickly after that moved into the lobby of the Public Theater. It became a weekly thing, and people would come, just hang out in the lobby of the Public Theater. We would work together for 20 minutes and then I would take questions from them about their creative process. COVID happened, I went online, Public Theater and HowlRound hosted us online on Zoom, and then it was every day. I wanted to do it every single day. During the first months of lockdown when community really needed– so many people needed somewhere to go, and so many people needed to be around other people, and we could not physically be around other people. Everything was closed down. So I just said “Every day we’re going to get online and do Watch Me Work.” We had people from all over the world Zooming in, and  we create a community. After lockdown, we came back from everything. Now we’re back to once a week. Once a week, Mondays, 5:00 P.M., you can sign up through the Public Theater website. What’s great about Watch Me Work is I’ll talk to you in real time about your creative process. You don’t have to be in a university program. You don’t have to be a matriculated student anywhere. You don’t have to live in the United States. All you have to do is have access to some kind of online portal situation. Come on, I’ll talk to you, and I’ll talk to you about your work and your creative process. It’s fun! I love it. I love doing it. Yeah, I’ve been doing it for a long time . Jo Reed: As we’re ending, do have any final thoughts you want to share about “Sally And Tom”Suzan-Lori Parks: I was thinking, things I want to say. We say, in the play, “This is not a love story.” It’s more like a truth and reconciliation story. So, just to give people that as a way to think about it. Also, I’m amazed at how the play, it resonates with all kinds of audiences, but especially younger audiences. We had a group of young partners, they call them at the Public Theater, the other night, and it was like “Whoa!” It was electric. So that’s very moving to me, to know that the transmission is happening. So that was joyful. I think people coming up and coming into their adulthood, or in the first 10, 20 years of their adulthood, are very eager and open in ways that are really valuable to our culture. So I would just encourage that openness, people who are coming up, because we need you. Jo Reed: I think that’s a great place to end it. Thank you so much.Suzan-Lori Parks: Thank you so much, Josephine. This is so fun. What fun! Jo Reed: It was great, thank you. Suzan-Lori Parks: Yeah, thank you. You asked all the right questions.Jo Reed: That was the incomparable playwright Suzan-Lori Parks, we were talking about many things–especially her play “Sally and Tom” which has been extended at the Public Theater through May 5. You can keep up with her at Suzanloriparks.com. We’ll have links in our show notes to her website and to the Public Theater where you can get information about “Sally and Tom” and SLP’s project Watch Me Work.  You’ve been listening to Art Works produced at the National Endowment for the Arts. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts and leave us a rating on Apple—it will help people to find us. For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Josephine Reed. Thanks for listening.

From her early beginnings as a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Amina Claudine Myers has gained acclaim as a skilled composer for voice and instruments, often displaying her gospel influences. Her move to New York City in the 1970s led her to prioritize her compositional work and to take on theatrical production projects.  Myers was born in Blackwell, Arkansas, and was brought up primarily by her great aunt and her great uncle. She started taking piano lessons at the age of six and, when she was seven, her family moved to a Black community in Dallas, Texas, where Myers continued her lessons. The family moved back to Blackwell in 1957 and, soon after, Myers formed a gospel group that toured the local circuit. The recipient of several college scholarships, she majored in music education at Philander Smith College in Little Rock, Arkansas. During this time, she played in the music department jazz band, became student director for the choir, and taught herself to play the organ.After graduation, Myers moved to Chicago, where she taught music at an elementary school for six years. She became a member of AACM in 1966 and was one of the performers at the AACM’s second concert. In the late 1960s, she added “Amina” to her name.As an AACM member, Myers started composing for voice and instruments. Her original compositions incorporated traditional influences, including blues, gospel, and jazz. In 1975, she organized her first voice choir for her musical called “I Dream,” which was first presented in Chicago. After moving to New York City, she premiered her work “Improvisational Suite for Chorus, Pipe Organ and Percussion”(with an ensemble of nineteen: sixteen voices, two percussionists, and Myers on pipe organ) at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church and “When the Berries Fell,” consisting of eight voices, electric organ, piano, and two percussionists, at Manhattan Community College.In New York she wrote for theater, composing music for a number of Off-Broadway productions and even acting in some. She was the assistant musical director for Ain’t Misbehavin’ prior to its Broadway production. She expanded her palette and has created works for dance and for chamber orchestra and chorus as well as works in collaboration with the Chinese composer and vocalist Sola Lui.She has also continued working in the jazz realm, recording and performing with many great jazz artists, including notable tours with Lester Bowie, Charlie Haden’s Liberation Orchestra, and Archie Shepp. She has performed throughout Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and North America, and also held residencies and conducted workshops at colleges and universities nationally and internationally.Myers has received many grants and awards, including the 2021 Living Legacy Award from Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, Meet the Composer, and New York Foundation for the Arts. She was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame in 2010. She resides and teaches privately in New York City.Select DiscographyPoems for Piano: The Piano Music of Marion Brown, Sweet Earth, 1979Muhal Richard Abrams, Duet, Black Saint, 1981Women in (E)Motion Festival, Tradition & Moderne, 1988Augmented Variations, Amina C Records, 2005-2008Sama Rou: Songs from My Soul, Amina C Records, 2016