S02E04 – Jennifer Kwon Dobbs (Cooking, Militarism, & Transnational Exchange)

S02E04 – Jennifer Kwon Dobbs (Cooking, Militarism, & Transnational Exchange)

The new season of The Lit Fantastic is now airing on KBOO 90.7 Portland Community Radio (we’ve moved from podcast to radio, but will still have old and new episodes archived online at KBOO.fm and on iTunes).

In our fourth episode of season 2 , we talk to the poet Jennifer Kwon Dobbs about a wide range of topics that orbit the idea of transnational exchange and cultural interaction.  Beginning with her obsession with cooking and the Korean ingredients and flavors she has had to teach herself as a transnational Korean adoptee, we explore other ways in which which culture and identity is learned/relearned in the body, US militarism in Oklahoma, adoption and identity (re)formation, teaching race in a multilingual home and in the university classroom, and the unexpected complexity of translation and the flow of international poetry when one realizes that it is not a uni-directional exchange, but rather a feedback loop of influence. We close with two poems from Jennifer’s new book, Interrogation Room.

https://soundcloud.com/thelitfantastic/s2-ep-04-jennifer-kwon-dobbs-cooking-militarism-transnational-exchange

https://kboo.fm/media/65338-lit-fantastic-writers-geek-out-050718

Born in Wonju, Republic of Korea and adopted by a steelworker and homemaker in Oklahoma, Jennifer Kwon Dobbs is a poet, essayist, and scholar with interests in creative writing, critical adoption studies, Asian American literature, and Korean literary translation. She holds a BA in English from Oklahoma State University, an MFA in Poetry from the University of Pittsburgh, and an MA in English/PhD in Literature and Creative from the University of Southern California.

Her works include Paper Pavilion (2007), recipient of the White Pine Press Poetry Prize and the New England Poetry Club’s Sheila Motton Book Award; Interrogation Room (White Pine Press 2018), finalist for the Copper Nickel/Milkweed Jake Adam York Prize; and the chapbooks Notes from a Missing Person (Essay Press 2015); Necro Citizens (forthcoming); and Song of a Mirror, finalist for the Tupelo Press Snowbound Chapbook Award. Currently, she is co-editing Radical Kinships: An Anthology of Autocritical Writing with Dr. Jenny Heijun Wills and Joshua Whitehead.

Widely collaborative, Jennifer has partnered with composers, artists, documentary filmmakers, dance choreographers, and virtual reality programmers on a range of interdisciplinary projects that have premiered in Asia, Europe, and North America. In support of her writing and scholarship, she has received grants from the Daesan Foundation, Intermedia Arts, Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, Minnesota State Arts Board, among others.

S02E03 – Jenna Lê (Whales, Language, and Returning)

S02E03 – Jenna Lê (Whales, Language, and Returning)

The new season of The Lit Fantastic is now airing on KBOO 90.7 Portland Community Radio (we’ve moved from podcast to radio, but will still have old and new episodes archived online at KBOO.fm and on iTunes).

Our third episode in season 2 is an hour-long conversation with poet and physician Jenna Lê in which we dive deep into a sea of obsessions, ranging from the Bronte Sisters to whales, with an odd assortment of topics along the way. We touch on languages lost and found, the cultural importance of names, Taiwanese melodramas from the 80s, and return again to “returning” – the biological and psychological need to find our way home. As always, the episode closes with poetry.

https://soundcloud.com/thelitfantastic/s2-ep-03-jenna-le-whales-language-and-returning

https://kboo.fm/media/64588-lit-fantastic-writers-geek-out-040218

A Minnesota-born daughter of Vietnam War refugees, Jenna Lê earned her B.A. in mathematics before obtaining her M.D. She lives and works as a physician and educator in the Upper Valley region of New Hampshire. She is the author of two full-length collections of poems, Six Rivers (NYQ Books, 2011), which was a Small Press Distribution Poetry Bestseller, and A History of the Cetacean American Diaspora (Indolent Books, 2018; first edition: Anchor & Plume Press, 2016), which won Second Place in the 2017 Elgin Awards. Her poetry, fiction, essays, book criticism, and poetry translations have been published widely. Le has been a Minnetonka Review Editor’s Prize winner, a two-time Alpha Omega Alpha Pharos Poetry Competition winner, a William Carlos Williams Poetry Competition finalist, a Michael E. DeBakey Poetry Award finalist, a Pamet River Prize semifinalist, a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, a Best of the Net nominee, and a Rhysling Award nominee. Since 2014 (after her Pharos Poetry Competition wins), Le has also served on the editorial board of the Pharos, the journal of the Alpha Omega Alpha Medical Honor Society. Her hobbies include drawing and painting. Visit her online at https://jennalewriting.com

 

S2E02 – Saba Razvi (Mummies & What They Reveal)

S2E02 – Saba Razvi (Mummies & What They Reveal)

The new season of The Lit Fantastic is now airing on KBOO 90.7 Portland Community Radio (we’ve moved from podcast to radio, but will still have old and new episodes archived online at KBOO.fm and on iTunes).

Our second episode in season 2 is an hour-long conversation with poet, fiction writer, and scholar, Saba Razvi in which we “unravel” Saba’s recent obsession with mummies, and connect it with her other obsessions with automata, Frankenstein, mirrors, and ancient divination practices. The episode closes with poetry (sorry, no Tijuana Sunday music this time!)

 

https://soundcloud.com/thelitfantastic/s2-ep-02-saba-razvi-mummies-what-they-reveal

Saba Syed Razvi is the author of In the Crocodile Gardens (Agape Editions), heliophobia (Finishing Line Press) Limerence & Lux (Chax Press), Of the Divining and the Dead (Finishing Line Press), Beside the Muezzin’s Call & Beyond the Harem’s Veil (Finishing Line Press). Her poems have appeared in journals such as The Offending Adam, Diner, TheTHE Poetry Blog’s Infoxicated Corner, The Homestead Review, NonBinary Review, 10×3 plus, 13th Warrior Review, The Arbor Vitae Review, and Arsenic Lobster, and others, as well as in anthologies such as Voices of Resistance: Muslim Women on War Faith and Sexuality, The Loudest Voice Anthology, The Liddell Book of Poetry, Political Punch: Contemporary Poems on the Politics of Identity, The Rhysling Anthology, Dreamspinning, and Carrying the Branch: Poets in Search of Peace. Her poems have been nominated for the Elgin Award, the Bettering American Poetry Awards, The Best of the Net Award, the Rhysling Award, and have won a 2015 Independent Best American Poetry Award. She is currently an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at the University of Houston in Victoria, TX, where in addition to working on scholarly research on interfaces between Science and contemporary Poetry, she is researching Sufi Poetry in translation, and writing new poems and fiction. She’s available for readings, guest lectures in person or by videoconference, visits to book clubs, individual consultations or commissions, workshops, and various collaborations. Visit her online at https://sabarazviauthorsite.wordpress.com

Season 2 – Episode List

Season 2

Season 2 of The Lit Fantastic aired in 2018 as a monthly 1-hour show on KBOO 90.7 Portland Community Radio and archived on KBOO.fm  and iTunes. We’ll be adding new episodes as they are broadcast.  Special thanks to my producer for this season, Kat Batuigas, and to KBOO 90.7 FM, Portland’s Community Radio Station, where this show was recorded.

This season features interviews that revolve around obsessions with KFC culture, mummies, whales, evolution, fantasy, floor restoration, and much much more .  New episodes aired every first Monday at 10 pm Pacific Time on KBOO FM, Portland, and the podcast versions appear on SoundCloud a week or two later.

S2E01- Jon Tribble (KFC & Blue Collar Work)

S2E01 – Jon Tribble (KFC & Blue Collar Work)

The new season of The Lit Fantastic is now airing on KBOO 90.7 Portland Community Radio (we’ve moved from podcast to radio, but will still have old and new episodes archived online at KBOO.fm, SoundCloud, and on iTunes).

Our season opener is an hour-long conversation with poet and editor Jon Tribble in which we discuss KFC, the cult of Colonel Sanders, and blue collar work in America. Also featuring some fascinating trivia about KFC (and a surprise or two if you listen all the way to the end).

 

https://soundcloud.com/thelitfantastic/s2-ep-01-jon-tribble-kfc-blue-collar-work

Jon Tribble is author of two collections of poems: Natural State (Glass Lyre Press, 2016), and, And There Is Many a Good Thing (Salmon Poetry, 2017). His third book, God of the Kitchen, is forthcoming from Glass Lyre Press in 2018. He is the recipient of a 2003 Artist Fellowship Award in Poetry from the Illinois Arts Council and his poems have appeared in print in journals and anthologies, including Ploughshares, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry, Crazyhorse, Quarterly West,and The Jazz Poetry Anthology, and online at The Account, Dublin Poetry Review, The Blue Mountain Review, and storySouth. His work was selected as the 2001 winner of the Campbell Corner Poetry Prize from Sarah Lawrence College and as a winner in the 2016 Nazim Hikmet Poetry Prize Competition. He is managing editor of Crab Orchard Review and series editor of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry published by SIU Press.

S1E04: David Campos (Roleplaying Games & Community)

S1E04: David Campos (Roleplaying Games & Community)

In a particularly geeky conversation, host Neil Aitken and poet David Campos unpack Campos’ obsession with collaborative roleplaying and computer games, as well as how the lessons we learn at the game table carry over into both realms of writing and academic work.

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E01: Eugenia Leigh (Worldbuilding & Fantasy)

 

E01: Eugenia Leigh (Worldbuilding & Fantasy)

 

Eugenia Leigh discusses her obsession with worldbuilding, whether in poetry, literary fiction, or fantasy realms. We geek out over JRR Tolkien’s own obsession with language and the creation of founding myths, the intersection between faith and fantasy, and what exactly “selah” means.

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