1888: The How, The Why

We took our Why We Write project on the road with an Orange County Tour. Live events were produced throughout Orange County and featured author readings from curated essay submissions. This event was recorded live at Cooks Chapel, Packing House in Anaheim, California. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions, Anaheim Packing District and The LAB.  1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each interdisciplinary episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Producers: Trevor Allred and Kevin Staniec Audio and Video: Brew Sessions Host: Michael Martin Moderator: Eric Newman Guests: Shauna Barbosa, PJ Colando, Amanda Fletcher, Ryan Gattis, Ashli Lomeli, Bridget Lyons, Michael Martin, Joanna Nelius, Toti O’Brien, Lydia Oxenham, Mai Pham, Linda Ravenswood, Cindy Rinne, Kathryn Ross, Vincent Sca

We took our Why We Write project on the road with an Orange County Tour. Live events were produced throughout Orange County and featured author readings from curated essay submissions. This event was recorded live at The LAB Anti-Mall in Costa Mesa, California. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions, Anaheim Packing District and The LAB.  1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each interdisciplinary episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Producers: Trevor Allred and Kevin Staniec Audio and Video: Brew Sessions Host and Moderator: Trevor Allred Guests: Jonathan Alexander, Peter Dingus, Gwen Goodkin, Mike Gravagno, Natalie Green, Billie Kelpin, Nancy Klann, Annie Moose, Sam Ortiz, and Elizabeth Vasquez 1888 Center Podcast music composed and performed by Dan Reckard     Inspired

A very special ALL Moon Tide Press edition of  Writers’ Block Live with Eric Morago, Daniel McGinn, Alexis Rhone Fancher, and Peggy Dobreer. Friend of YourPopFilter and two-time Writers’ Block guest Eric Morago is the publisher at Moon Tide Press, and in the spring of 2018 the press published three amazing books of poetry: Daniel McGinn’s The Moon, My Lover, My Mother, & The Dog, Alexis Rhone Fancher’s Junkie Wife, and Peggy Dobreer’s Drop and Dazzle. Daniel, Alexis, and Peggy read from their respective collections and discussed the power of pop songs, the allure of erotica, why movement matters, and so much more! Daniel McGinn is the author of The Moon, My Lover, My Mother & The Dog (Moon Tide Press, 2018) and 1000 Black Umbrellas (Write Bloody, 2011) He’s a native of Southern California who’s led workshops at Half Off Books, The Orange County Rescue Mission, charter schools and poetry venues. Daniel received his MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been married to the poet and p

Today our podcast connects with Namrata Poddar. Namrata Poddar writes fiction, non-fiction, occasionally translates Francophone writers of Afro-Asian diaspora into English and serves as Interviews Editor for Kweli where she curates a series on Race, Power, and Storytelling. For over a decade, her work has explored the intersection of storytelling and social justice via race, class, gender, place and migration. Her creative work has appeared in The Margins, Transition, Literary Hub, Electric Literature, Los Angeles Review of Books Quarterly, The Feminist Wire, Necessary Fiction, Longreads (forthcoming) and elsewhere. As a literary critic, her work on islands and coastal cultures have appeared in English and in French in anthologies on the Caribbean, Pacific, and Indian Ocean across the world. She holds a Ph.D. in French Studies from the University of Pennsylvania, an MFA in fiction from Bennington Writing Seminars, and Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Transnational Cultures from UCLA where she taug

To celebrate the launch of Steven Sanchez’s first full-length poetry book, Phantom Tongue, Mike sits down with Steven, Michelle Brittan Rosado, and Mathieu Cailler to talk about the process of putting a book together, how one manages to keep making love poems interesting, the power of persona poems and so much more! Mathieu Cailler’s poetry and prose have been widely featured in numerous national and international publications, including the Los Angeles Times and The Saturday Evening Post. A graduate of the Vermont College of Fine Arts, he is the recipient of a Short Story America Prize for Short Fiction and a Shakespeare Award for Poetry. He is the author of Clotheslines (Red Bird Press), Shhh (ELJ Publications), and Loss Angeles (Short Story America Press), which has been honored by the Hollywood, New York, London, Paris, Best Book, and International Book Awards. His newest book, May I Have This Dance? (About Editions), was recently named poetry winner of the New England Book Festival. Michelle Brittan Ros

Rocky Kuner is a 20 year old singer songwriter from Orange County. She graduated from the Orange County School of the Arts in Santa Ana and studied Commercial Music and Music & Theater. She plays mulitiple instruments including guitar, dulcimer, bass, drums, cajón and piano. She is currently in a Rush Tribute band called YYNOT as the lead vocalist and has already traveled to play in Florida with them. They play originals and covers and their online fans are so kind and supportive. She plays her own music locally throughout OC and LA including The Troubador, The Mint, OC Fair’s Hangar stage, The Gaslamp, and many others. She plans to keep writing and recording and tour with YYNOT this year.Sounds + Stories is an eclectic music series featuring live performances and entertaining discussions with emerging and established artists. Produced in collaboration with Brew Sessions Live. Special episodes are filmed and edited into a short documentary compilation with the audio from each episode recorded and archived

Today our podcast connects with Steve Martinez. Los Angeles native Steve Martinez is a fine artist, muralist, photographer, graphic designer, and painted a 20’ x 8’ mural in the 1888 Center. His contemporary work deals with the discourse between the symbolic and the realistic within daily urban life. The thread of Mayan symbols and hieroglyphs—both representative of Martinez’s history and culture—is inescapable in his work, always connecting the present to the past by uplifting, preserving, and honoring a significant layer of meaning and identity.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: St

Mike sits down with novelist Liz Harmer, poet and community organizer Trevor K Allred, and a poet Shauna Barbosa to hear the work from their individual projects and discuss the power of audience, politics, the meaning of portals, the meaning of water, the magic of astrology and why fake bluster is important (AND SO MUCH MORE)! Trevor Kaiser Allred has work published in Boned Stories, Eunoia Review, and Pomona Valley Review, and was a poetry judge for DASH Literary Journal Vol 9. He is the Community Relations Manager at 1888 Center, and is a poet at The dA Center for the Arts. Liz Harmer is a Canadian writer living in California. Her essays, stories, and reviews have been published widely. In 2014 she won a National Magazine Award for Personal Journalism, and was a finalist for the Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction. Her first novel, The Amateurs, is available in Canada. Shauna Barbosa is the author of the poetry collection Cape Verdean Blues (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2018). Her poems have appea

Driven by their love of music Bright Is My Sun formed a group that would be inspirational and positive. As a collective, they have many different influences and use their experience and tastes as a tool for success in making music. Bright Is My Sun has the ambition and talent to settle into the industry just nicely… especially with their message of positivity, considering everything else is about drugs and violence. They have set out on a mission for a Hip Hop Intervention. “Dope inside, cant no one change it”. We truly love our fans and they are our Rays of Hope and inspiration to be better!Sounds + Stories is an eclectic music series featuring live performances and entertaining discussions with emerging and established artists. Produced in collaboration with Brew Sessions Live. Special episodes are filmed and edited into a short documentary compilation with the audio from each episode recorded and archived for podcast.Guest: Bright Is My SunProduced by Past Forward in partnership with Brew Sessions Live.

Today our podcast connects with Sarah Nicole Smetana. The Midnights (HarperTeen / HarperCollins) is her first novel. Sarah Nicole Smetana grew up in Orange, California, where she wrote songs, played in a few bands, and successfully pilfered all of her parents’ best vinyl records. She received her BFA in Creative Writing from Chapman University and her MFA in Fiction from The New School. Currently, she lives in Brooklyn with her husband and their three-legged cat.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Sarah Nicole Smetana

Today our podcast connects with Panio Gianopoulos. Panio Gianopoulos is the author of the story collection, How to Get Into Our House and Where We Keep the Money, and the novella, A Familiar Beast. His stories, essays, and poetry have appeared in Tin House, Northwest Review, Salon, The Rattling Wall, Chicago Quarterly Review, Big Fiction, The Brooklyn Rail, Catamaran Literary Reader, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. A recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Award for Non-Fiction, he has been included in the anthologies The Bastard on the Couch, Cooking and Stealing: The Tin House Non-Fiction Reader, and The Encyclopedia of Exes.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers:

Back in February, Mike sat down with poets Eric Morago, Nan Cohen, and Victoria Chang to discuss how becoming a publisher can affect one’s writing, the influence of history and religion, and intense poetry projects, plus a whole lot more! Eric Morago is a two-time Pushcart Prize nominated poet who believes performance carries as much importance on the page, as it does off. Currently he hosts a monthly reading series, teaches writing workshops, and serves as publisher and editor-in-chief of Moontide Press. Eric is the author of What We Ache For (Moon Tide Press) and Feasting on Sky (Paper Plane Pilots). He has an MFA in Creative Writing from California State University, Long Beach and lives in Los Angeles, California. Nan Cohen, the longtime poetry director of the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference, is the author of two poetry collections, Rope Bridge (2005) and Unfinished City (2017).  Her work has appeared in magazines and anthologies including Ploughshares, Poet Lore, Poetry International, The New Republican

Today our podcast connects with Irena Praitis. Irena Praitis’s fifth book The Last Stone in the Circle received the 2015 Red Mountain Press Poetry Prize.  Her poems, translations, essays, and reviews have appeared in more than 100 journals including Southwest Review, Denver Quarterly, and Rattle. She was a Fulbright Scholar in Vilnius, Lithuania, and is a professor of creative writing and literature at California State University, Fullerton.  She lives in Fullerton, California, with her son Ishaan.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Irena Praitis

Today our podcast connects with Jonathan Alexander. Jonathan Alexander is a writer, literacy scholar, and cultural critic. Jonathan is Chancellor’s Professor of English at UC Irvine, where he is director of the Center for Excellence in Writing and Communication. He is the author, co-author, or editor of 13 books, including Writing Youth: Young Adult Fiction as Literacy Sponsorship (2016) and the newly released critical memoir, Creep: A Life, a Theory, an Apology. He is also the YA editor and a frequent contributor for the Los Angeles Review of Books.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest

Another edition of Writers’ Block Live! Back in May, Mike sat down with nonfiction writer Doug Dechow and poet Jason Morphew to talk about research into one’s own family, separating fact from fantasy, the allure of isolation, lyric poetry and much more! Doug Dechow is researching and writing a book about his grand-uncle Harry Dale Park, who died over France in World War II.  Doug’s article on the 100th Bomb Group is the cover story for the July 2018 issue of Aviation History. He has written about WWII and about aviation for The Atlantic, Air & Space Magazine, LitHub, Fifth Wednesday, Airplane Reading, Curator, the anthology Bombs Away!, and other outlets. He has also published articles and chapters in Creative Writing in the Digital Age, Parade, Poets & Writers, and elsewhere. Doug is the co-author of Generation Space: A Love Story and The Craft of Library Instruction and the co-editor of Intertwingled: The Work and Influence of Ted Nelson. Doug is also the Director of Digital Projects at the Center

A live recording of our educational podcast with Nicole Miyuki Santo. Nicole Miyuki Santo is a freelance artist, graphic designer, teacher, and recent published author of By Hand: The Art of Modern Lettering. Since 2015, she has taught in-person hand-lettering workshops empowering her students to tap into their creativity and develop their own unique voice. She is a kind spirit and truly believes that everyone, kids and adults both, can enjoy using their own two hands to create. Nicole studied graphic design and advertising at Chapman University here in Orange, CA and currently lives in Los Angeles. Visit her online at nicolemiyuki.com and on Instagram @nicolemiyuki.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with

Dréa is a singer, songwriter, classical pianist, poet and spoken word artist. Her songs tell the story of a life lived thus far, encompassing a wide range of emotion and conviction.Robert is an Oscar & Grammy winning, Emmy nominated Producer/Engineer/Mixer and owner of Defy Recordings. Recent clients of note include Paul McCartney, Lady Gaga, U2, Chaka Khan, Placido Domingo, Ingrid Michelson, Christina Aguilera, Alice Cooper and Duran Duran.The “Prelude” album is available now on Amazon, iTunes, Spotify and GooglePlay, is the first collaboration of new artist Dréa and producer Robert L. Smith.Sounds + Stories is an eclectic music series featuring live performances and entertaining discussions with emerging and established artists. Produced in collaboration with Brew Sessions Live. Special episodes are filmed and edited into a short documentary compilation with the audio from each episode recorded and archived for podcast.Guest: Dréa and Robert L. SmithProduced by Past Forward in partnership with Brew Sess

Today our podcast connects with Rebecca Makkai, author of The Borrower, The Hundred-Year House, which won the Novel of the Year Award from the Chicago Writers Association, and Music for Wartime. Her work has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Harper's, and Tin House, among others. She lives outside Chicago with her husband and two daughters.     1888 Center programs are recorded and archived as a free educational resource on our website or with your favorite podcast app including Apple and Spotify. Each episode is designed to provide a unique platform for industry innovators to share stories about art, literature, music, history, science, or technology. Produced in partnership with Brew Sessions.   Producers: Jon-Barrett Ingels and Kevin Staniec Manager: Sarah Becker Host: Jon-Barrett Ingels Guest: Rebecca Makkai

In this episode Peter connects with artist Sandra Jones Campbell. Visual and fine artist Sandra Jones Campbell discusses her inspiration and resulting artwork, a form that has touched millions.  Her experiences allow an exploration of multiple issues that artists confront, from the nature of art as an extension of oneself and the legal system's limited protection for moral rights in the artist's creations. As we meander down the copyright river in this discussion, the looming question we ask is how artists can better protect themselves in their business dealings and how the legal system can make it easier for them.     The Arts Counsel podcast, hosted by Peter Afrasiabi, is a thirty-minute conversation with influential content creators about their work at the intersection of art and the law. Designed to demystify the legal system, guests share stories of their struggles and successes as it relates to their creative endeavors, and Afrasiabi offers insight to help our audience better understand their rights a

A live recording of our educational podcast The Purpose of Past Tense with Daron Joffe. Produced in partnership with the Orange Home Grown. Biodynamics is a holistic, ecological, and ethical approach to farming, gardening, food, and nutrition.Biodynamic agriculture has been practiced for nearly a century, on every continent on Earth. Biodynamic principles and practices are based on the spiritual insights and practical suggestions of Dr. Rudolf Steiner, and have been developed through the collaboration of many farmers and researchers since the early 1920s. Today, the biodynamic movement encompasses thousands of regenerative gardens, farms, ranches, orchards, and vineyards, in a wide variety of climates, ecological contexts, and economic settings. Come spend an evening at the 1888 Center with Orange Home Grown and guest speaker Daron Joffe, also known as Farmer “D”. Daron is the Executive Director of Coastal Roots Farm and the Leichtag Foundation’s Director of Agricultural Innovation and Development in Encinit