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Author Podcasts

By: August Baker
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  • Summary

  • interviews with authors about their recent books
    2022
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Episodes
  • Sheryl Luna. Magnificent errors

    Sheryl Luna. Magnificent errors
    Aug 17 2022
    Magnificent Errors is a collection of poems that shows how mental health challenges can elicit beauty, resiliency, and hope. In 2005, Sheryl Luna burst onto the poetry scene with Pity the Drowned Horses, which quickly became a classic of border and Southwest literature with its major point of reference in and around El Paso, Texas. Now with the poems in Magnificent Errors, Luna’s third collection and winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, Luna turns her gaze toward people living on the margins—whether it be cultural, socioeconomic, psychological, or personal—and celebrates their ability to recover and thrive. Luna reveals that individuals who suffer and experience injustice are often lovely and awe inspiring. Her poems reflect on immigrants in a detention camp, a meth addict, a homeless individual, and someone on food stamps. She explores the voices of people with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or PTSD, poets, visual artists, and people living in a mental health community setting. The author’s own journey to recovery from childhood abuse and mental illness also illuminates how healing is possible. The poems in Magnificent Errors are lyrical, narrative, and often highly personal, exploring what it means to be the “other” and how to cope with difference and illness. They venerate characters who overcome difficulties including ostracism and degradation. People who live outside of the mainstream in poverty are survivors, and showing their experience teaches us compassion and kindness. Ideas of art, culture, and recovery flow throughout the poems, exploring artistic creativity as a means of redemption. With language that is fresh and surprising, Sheryl Luna shares these remarkable poems that bring a reader into the experiences of marginalization and offer hope that grace and restoration do indeed follow. “With Magnificent Errors, Luna has broken the regional boundaries of the American Southwest and become one of America’s finest poets.” —Dagoberto Gilb, author of Before the End, After the Beginning “In Magnificent Errors, Sheryl Luna shows us once again why she is one of America’s premier poets. Her gutsy, gorgeous language, her hard-won vision of grit and grace—all bid us enter the universe of a poetic saint whose earthy wisdom is unparalleled.” —Joy Roulier Sawyer, author of Lifeguards and Tongues of Men and Angels "Sheryl Luna's voice is unforgettable because she has a visionary touch where her experiences become our own. As readers, we are blessed to find ourselves in her poems. We have been waiting. As a poet, she shows us, in powerful poem after poem, what it takes for the poet to reveal her place in a difficult world. The result is a book that opens when the poet says so and rests, gently, in the reader's hands." —Ray Gonzalez, author of Feel Puma "Since her 2005 debut Pity the Drowned Horses, Luna has excelled at the elegant lyric, yet what stands out here are the interior landscapes that bridge a visionary attention to nature and raw reflections on mental illness, abuse, trauma, and healing. . . . Luna’s book beautifully expands upon the many intersections between Chicana ecopoetics and disability poetics, while claiming its own lyric territories." —The Latinx Project "Like her acclaimed first book 'Pity the Drowned Horses' and second book 'Seven,' Luna's newest work reminds readers, no matter a person's socio-economic or mental status, all of humanity is linked. Every poem in this collection is a standout. Each piece succinctly captures the discontent of the country's working poor." —Latino Book Review Author Sheryl Luna’s first collection, Pity the Drowned Horses, won the inaugural Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize for emerging Latino/a poets (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). She has been awarded fellowships from Yaddo, Anderson Center, Ragdale Foundation, and Canto Mundo. She received the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation Award from Sandra Cisneros in 2008. Her poems have appeared in Poetry, Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, Poetry Northwest, Puerto del Sol, Kalliope, and Notre Dame Review, among others. Transcript August: (00:09) "Listening to Sky: There are song shells in our pink ears. We take apart. We break. We forsake. Unthinkable girl dismembered by 17 year old boy. Sky weaving a red lit thread. We are but guests among dragging gray clouds. Tapping to the beat of stars and making music, we refuse to forget ourselves in the first snow. Newspaper stories tell us we matter, tell us we don't matter. The dying churches feed us the paradox of living, the peacock's beauty tinged pride, the Magnificence of Errors. Praise more than blackberries, praise more than sunshine. August: (00:58) At home in our graves, we are less than politics and language, trust and opening of windows. Let go of smug, selfish days. I hear leaves scraping across pavement, falling from above at an angle, pumpkins half eaten by squirrels. ...
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    33 mins
  • Anne E. Parsons. From asylum to prison

    Anne E. Parsons. From asylum to prison
    Jul 27 2022
    From Asylum to Prison Deinstitutionalization and the Rise of Mass Incarceration after 1945 By Anne E. Parsons From Asylum to Prison AWARDS & DISTINCTIONS Co-winner, 2019 Outstanding Book Award, Disability History Association To many, asylums are a relic of a bygone era. State governments took steps between 1950 and 1990 to minimize the involuntary confinement of people in psychiatric hospitals, and many mental health facilities closed down. Yet, as Anne Parsons reveals, the asylum did not die during deinstitutionalization. Instead, it returned in the modern prison industrial complex as the government shifted to a more punitive, institutional approach to social deviance. Focusing on Pennsylvania, the state that ran one of the largest mental health systems in the country, Parsons tracks how the lack of community-based services, a fear-based politics around mental illness, and the economics of institutions meant that closing mental hospitals fed a cycle of incarceration that became an epidemic. This groundbreaking book recasts the political narrative of the late twentieth century, as Parsons charts how the politics of mass incarceration shaped the deinstitutionalization of psychiatric hospitals and mental health policy making. In doing so, she offers critical insight into how the prison took the place of the asylum in crucial ways, shaping the rise of the prison industrial complex. About the Author Anne E. Parsons is associate professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, where she serves as the Director of Public History. For more information about Anne E. Parsons, visit the Author Page. Reviews “Parsons has written an excellent book about hopes, frustrations, and failures of deinstitutionalization and decarceration—one that will be of interest to historians, sociologists, psychologists and psychiatrists, policy makers, and students of disability studies.”--Journal of the History of Medicine “A finely detailed assessment . . . Parsons places punitive shifts in criminal justice system perspectives and practice . . . at the forefront of the increased use of jails and prisons for mentally ill or psychiatrically disabled persons.”--ICCA Journal “An important work that urges scholars to consider how the contemporary mass incarceration crisis and overincarceration of people with mental illness in the United States has roots in a longer history of state-funded custodial institutions. . . . This book should garner much discussion in graduate seminars and would be a valuable read for anyone interested in the history of psychiatry, institutions, and the carceral state.”--H-Net Reviews “Parsons advances the compelling argument that a history of deinstitutionalization must be understood as inextricably intertwined with a history of mass incarceration in the United States. . . . As From Asylum to Prison powerfully demonstrates, the racialized and punitive political calculus that drove state and federal policies toward mass incarceration in the 1980s still persists – largely unrevised and too often unchallenged – to the present day.”--Journal of Social History “From Asylum to Prison definitively shows that asylums must be considered part of the carceral state—and that their ‘deinstitutionalization’ was less about shuttering asylums than it was repurposing them into prisons. The story of the country's move from asylum to prisons is one of reinstitutionalization rather than deinstitutionalization, not one of emptying institutions but shifting their function toward even more punitive ends.”--Reviews in American History “From Asylum to Prison joins a rich and growing literature on the history of the American carceral state. By centering the post-World War II expansion of the U.S. prison system squarely within the history of deinstitutionalization, Parsons reminds readers that mass incarceration, far from being a distinct historical phenomenon, has deep historical roots outside the halls of the criminal legal system. At the same time, however, as Parsons is contending with an ongoing social and political problem in the U.S., From Asylum to Prison demonstrates . . . the potentially life-changing value of historical research for the present and future.”--History Teacher 240 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, 10 halftones, 1 map, 1 graph, 1 table, notes, bibl., index PAPERBACK ISBN: 978-1-4696-6947-2 Published: February 2022 EBOOK ISBN: 978-1-4696-4064-8 Published: September 2018 Justice, Power, and Politics PAPERBACK   $24.95 E-BOOK   $19.99   Speaker 1: Today on Author Podcast, we're speaking about the book From Asylum to Prison. We're talking about how the mental asylums were, at one time, very prominent in the U.S., and they've declined over time. At perhaps the same timeframe, the prisons have become much more prominent. We're looking at that interplay between these asylums and the prisons. The book is called From Asylum to Prison. It's published by University of North ...
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    37 mins
  • Brad Reedy. The audacity to be you

    Brad Reedy. The audacity to be you
    Jun 10 2022
    We interview Brad Reedy about: The audacity to be you: learning to love your horrible, rotten self Expanding on his first book (The journey of the heroic parent) Reedy discusses how all our relationships are connected to the relationship we have with ourselves. He shows how the foundation for intimacy with partners, our ability to parent effectively, and the meaningfulness of our lives can be tied to how well we have unraveled our unique childhood history. The audacity to be you: Learning to love your horrible, rotten self is a simple but bold exploration into what makes us human and why happiness and connection are elusive for so many. Reedy's work is counter-intuitive, but readers will often have the experience of being found--and understood--as they make their way through his work. Many readers say that reading Brad's work is like hearing something for the first time that you already knew but just didn't have the words for it. Dr. Reedy is a renowned author, therapist, podcaster, and public speaker.  His approach is accessible and non-threatening. He is a prolific keynote speaker, T.V. and radio guest, and he travels the world presenting to audiences and training therapists. Through stories gathered from decades as a therapist, co-founder, and clinical director of Evoke Therapy Programs, Reedy gives the reader an intimate picture of mental health and healing. The audacity to be you explains how our personalities are built, brick by brick. From what it means to be a Self, we learn how to authentically love others. Readers will learn the essence of mental health, and, with that, the stigma of mental illness evaporates. Reedy debunks toxic myths so common in our culture, including: "You are only as happy as your least happy child." He shows how good psychotherapy goes beyond problem solving. Reedy teaches, "In this way of thinking, you don't get to be right anymore. But you get to be a Self. And that is so much better. That is 'The Audacity to Be You.'" To learn more about his work go to evoketherapy.com or drbradreedy.com. You can find his podcast "Finding You: An Evoke Therapy Podcast" on your favorite podcast app or by going to soundcloud.com. transcript August: Welcome. I'm August Baker, and welcome to the podcast today. I've recently been working with parents of children who have been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons, and I've also had a chance to work with some adolescents directly in a locked psychiatric hospital. And in the course of that work, I came to hear about a program called Evoke Therapy in Utah and are very good things about it. And in the course of my puzzles, I decided to go to the website, it's evoketherapy.com and see what was there. And I found a book. And today we're going to be talking about that book. It's called The Audacity to Be You Learning to Love Your Horrible Rotten Self. It's 2020, and the author is Brad Reedy, who is a co-founder of Evoke Therapy Programs and the clinical director, he's also the author of The Journey of the Heroic Parent, and he's the host of Finding You an Evoke Therapy podcast. Welcome Dr. Reedy. Dr. Reedy: Very happy to be here. Honored. Thank you for having me. August: Oh, thanks. I tell you one of the first things that parents say is that when their kid is in a psychiatric hospital or they're adolescent, it's very different. The reaction you get with the community is very different than if your child was in the hospital for a broken leg or a tumor. And that's what part of what makes it so terrifying. Can you speak to that? Dr. Reedy: That's a great beginning question. I have a lot of compassion for that. Sometimes doing this work. I forget how tight that the stigma and the shame of mental health grips people because talk about it, I talk about my own work and, and my own personal therapy over the years. And so I, I sometimes forget that. So it's nice to be reminded. For me, it comes back to maybe the simplest illustration of that kind of shame and stigma that I think about. I talk about this idea that if I were to say to you, my brother had a good baby that he has , they just had gave birth my brother and sister-in-law and said that, that the baby's a good baby. You would know that the baby has no needs. It's not crying, not sleeping, sleeping throughout the night probably that, that all of its needs and feelings are contained in a tight little box that makes them easier. So I think from birth, we learned that our emotional needs are so taxing to the people who care about us and love us, that we learn that good is to not have needs. Good is to not struggle, good is to not feel big feelings. And implied in that we don't say this ever, of course, but bad is to have all of those things. And that's what these psychiatric hospitals and programs like mine are doing. They're holding on to people whose feelings are spilling out in their symptoms and their behaviors. They'll self harm, their self-medicating habits. And so I think it goes back to...
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    42 mins
Art Literary History & Criticism Philosophy Social Sciences
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