RECORDED 3/16/15: This became an impromptu show when a scheduled guest ran into technical difficulties joining us. It turned out to be a fun conversation nevertheless as recurring guest host Jennifer Frappier and I talked about “mulatto fatigue” (hashtag/trademark), what it means to identify the Wisconsin teen shot by police as “biracial” as his family has requested, and more. Check it out here or on itunes. —Heidi Durrow
Season 2, Episode 17: Comedian Alex Barnett
RECORDED 3/2/15: I had a great talk with comedian Alex Barnett who bills himself as a Stand-Up Comedian and Multiracial Family Man. You can follow him on Twitter (@barnettcomic) and You Tube and his blog. And be sure to listen in. You can listen to our chat below or download the episode from itunes.–Heidi Durrow
Alex Barnett’s comedy is about family, specifically his family. As the White, Jewish husband of a Black woman (who converted to Judaism) and the father of a 3 year-old, Biracial son, he focuses his attention on the challenges of being a parent in a bad economy and the issues that confront interracial families (including the dynamics between members of the same family who are of different races).
Alex has been seen on the Katie Couric Show, been featured on Sirius/XM Radio’s “Raw Dog Comedy,” NBC’s EVB Live, RT TV America and NYC-TV and in The Wall Street Journal, The Huffington Post, and CNN.com.
Season 2, Episode 14: Author Claude Knobler, More Love Less Panic
RECORDED 1/26/15: I had a great time speaking with Claude Knobler who has published More Love Less Panic: 7 Lessons I Learned About Life, Love & Parenting After We Adopted Our Son from Ethiopia, a book about his adventures in parenting and what he learned when he adopted an Ethiopian child. This is how the publisher describes the story: “Already the biological parents of a seven-year-old son and a five-year-old daughter, Claude Knobler and his wife decided to adopt Nati, a five-year-old Ethiopian boy who seemed different from Knobler in every conceivable way. After more than five years spent trying to turn his wild, silly, adopted African son into a quiet, neurotic, Jewish guy like himself, Knobler realized the importance of having the courage to love, accept, and let go of his children.
In this wonderfully written memoir More Love, Less Panic, Knobler explains how his experiences raising Nati led him to learn a lesson that applied equally well to parenting his biological children: It’s essential to spend the time we are given with our children to love them and enjoy them, rather than push and mold them into who we think they should be.”
Claude and I had a fun and wide-ranging conversation discussing one of the book’s main takeaways: “We confuse panic with good parenting.” We also talked about the heartbreak about having “the conversation” with his son in an age where young black men have been the victims of police shootings and violence. Knobler writes about it eloquently in this Washington Post essay as well.
I really loved this book and read it in one sitting. It has heart and humor and a practical dose of advice from lived experience.
You can listen to the interview here, or download it on iTunes. (Subscribe and never miss another episode.)–Heidi Durrow
Claude Knobler’s essays have appeared in Parenting and on NPR’s “This I Believe,” as well as in one of the radio program’s literary anthologies, This I Believe: On Fatherhood, and in Worldwide Orphans Foundation founder Dr. Jane Aronson’s Carried in Our Hearts: The Gift of Adoption: Inspiring Stories of Families Created Across Continents alongside essays by Melissa Fay Greene, Mary-Louise Parker, Connie Britton and Shonda Rhimes.
Season 2, Episode 16: Writer Sherry Lee Quan
RECORDED 2/9/15: I was excited to talk with writer Sherry Lee Quan. She’s written a fascinating new memoir, LOVE IMAGINED, about growing up mixed-race (Black and Chinese) in a mostly Scandinavian-American region. Get your copy now! You can listen to the interview here or download it from itunes.–Heidi Durrow
Sherry Quan Lee approaches writing as a community resource and as culturally based art of an ordinary everyday practical aesthetic. Lee is a Community Instructor at Metropolitan State University (Intro to Creative Writing, Advanced Creative Writing), and has taught at Intermedia Arts, and the Loft Literary Center. She is the author of A Little Mixed Up, Guild Press, 1982 (second printing), Chinese Blackbird, a memoir in verse, published 2002 by the Asian American Renaissance, republished 2008 by Loving Healing Press, and How to Write a Suicide Note: serial essays that saved a woman’s life, Loving Healing Press, 2008.
Season 2, Episode 15: Writer Ravi Howard
RECORDED 2/2/15: You’re going to love Ravi Howard and his writing. I first met Ravi in 2008 at a writer’s residency where I was putting the final touches on my manuscript which became my first novel, The Girl Who Fell From the Sky. Ravi’s just published his second book, Driving the King, about Nat King Cole and an African-American veteran who has returned from abroad. Get a copy now–it’s a really wonderful read! You can listen to the interview here or download it from itunes.–Heidi Durrow
Ravi Howard received the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence in 2008 for the novel Like Trees, Walking, a fictionalized account of a true story, the 1981 lynching of a black teenager in Mobile, Alabama. Howard was a finalist for both the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award and the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award for Debut Fiction in 2008.
He has recorded commentary for National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and his work has appeared in The New York Times, Massachusetts Review and Callaloo. He also appeared in the Ted Koppel documentary, The Last Lynching, on the Discovery Channel. Howard has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Hurston-Wright Foundation, Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
His television production work has appeared on HBO, ESPN, Fox Sports 1, and NFL Network. He received a 2004 Sports Emmy for his work on HBO’s Inside the NFL.
Season 2, Episode 13: Writer Laila Lalami
RECORDED 1/21/15: I was excited to talk with award-winning writer Laila Lalami. I met Laila in 2004 at the Tin House Writers’ Conference. I think it wasn’t long after that conference she landed her first book deal and went on to publish her work to great acclaim. She’s just published her third book, The Moor’s Account, which is getting great reviews and buzz. I talked with her about her book and what the Mixed experience means to her. You can listen to the episode here or download it on iTunes.–Heidi Durrow
Laila Lalami was born and raised in Morocco. She attended Université Mohammed-V in Rabat, University College in London, and the University of Southern California, where she earned a Ph.D. in linguistics. She is the author of the short story collection Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits, which was a finalist for the Oregon Book Award, and the novel Secret Son, which was on the Orange Prize longlist. Her essays and opinion pieces have appeared in Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Nation, the Guardian, the New York Times, and in numerous anthologies. Her work has been translated into ten languages. She is the recipient of a British Council Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship and is currently an associate professor of creative writing at the University of California at Riverside. Her new novel, The Moor’s Account, was published in Fall 2014.
Season 2, Episode 12: Writer Marie Mockett
Marie Mockett
RECORDED ON 1/12/15: I was so excited to talk with writer Marie Mockett on the podcast! She has written an excellent new memoir, Where the Dead Pause and the Japanese Say Goodbye, as a follow-up to her amazing first novel, Picking Bones From Ash.
Marie’s story of returning to Japan after the devastating tsunami is incredibly moving. I loved it.
You can listen to my interview with her and learn more about her biracial and bicultural experience and about grief, and loss and healing here or download it from itunes.–Heidi Durrow
Season 2, Episode 11: Writer Thomas Chatterton Williams
RECORDED January 8, 2015 9AM Eastern: I was excited to speak with writer Thomas Chatterton Williams, author of the book Losing My Cool . He’s just published a powerful essay appearing in Virginia Quarterly Review called “Black and Blue and Blond.” Williams has a fascinating story and he’s a great writer who is pushing the discussion about the Mixed experience forward with new questions and new approaches. You can download our conversation from itunes. Or you can listen to the episode here.–Heidi Durrow
THOMAS CHATTERTON WILLIAMS is an American writer living in Paris. His work has appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, the American Scholar, the Atlantic, n+1, Lui and many other places. His first book, Losing My Cool: Love, Literature and a Black Man’s Escape from the Crowd (Penguin Press, 2010), is a memoir that explores the extent to which, growing up in the hip-hop era, Williams bought into misguided and limited notions of his own blackness, which he later rejected. He is currently at work on a novel and a screenplay.Season 2, Episode 10: Award-winning Writer Kiese Laymon
11/17/14: I can’t tell you how ridiculously excited I was to talk to Kiese Laymon, author of Long Division. He is the real deal! His novel nearly made my head explode it was so good. It’s funny, and heart-breaking and inventive and one of the most important books I’ve read in a long time. Don’t miss this episode in which he really breaks it down and talks candidly about the fiction of race and tackles the “What are you?” question! You can also download this episode (and all past episodes) on itunes—Heidi Durrow
Here’s a link to the Guernica interview I mentioned during the podcast: Hey Mama, by Kiese Laymon.
Kiese Laymon is a black southern writer, born and raised in Jackson, Mississippi. Laymon attended Millsaps College and Jackson State University before graduating from Oberlin College. He earned an MFA from Indiana University and is the author of the novel, Long Division and a collection of essays, How to Slowly Kill Yourself and Others in America. Long Division was named one of the Best Books of 2013 by a number of publications, including Buzzfeed, The Believer, Salon, Guernica, Mosaic Magazine, Chicago Tribune, The Morning News, MSNBC, Library Journal, Contemporary Literature, and the Crunk Feminist Collective. Both of Laymon’s book are finalists for the Mississippi Award for Arts and Letters in the fiction and nonfiction categories. Long Division is currently a finalist for Stanford’s Saroyan international writing award. Laymon has written essays and stories for numerous publications including Esquire, ESPN, Colorlines, NPR, Gawker, Truthout, Longman’s Hip Hop Reader, The Best American Non-required Reading, Guernica, Mythium and Politics and Culture. Laymon is currently at work on a new novel “And So On” and a memoir called 309: A Fat Black Memoir. He is an Associate Professor of English at Vassar College.
Season 2, Episode 9: PEN Open Book Award Winner Nina McConigley
11/10/14: I was so excited to talk with newly minted PEN Open Book Award Winner Nina McConigley author of Cowboys and East Indians. I first met Nina at a writer’s conference when she was still working on the book, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to see all of her success with this excellent read! Get your copy now Listen to our chat here or download it from itunes!-Heidi Durrow
NINA McCONIGLEY is the author of the story collection Cowboys and East Indians, which was the winner of the 2014 PEN Open Book Award. She was born in Singapore and grew up in Wyoming. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Houston, where she was an Inprint Brown Foundation Fellow. She also holds an MA in English from the University of Wyoming and a BA in Literature from Saint Olaf College. She is the winner of a Barthelme Memorial Fellowship in Non-Fiction and served as the Non-Fiction Editor of Gulf Coast: a Journal of Literature and Fine Arts. Her play,Owen Wister Considered was one of five plays produced in 2005 for the Edward Albee New Playwrights Festival, in which Pulitzer-prize winning playwright Lanford Wilson was the producer. She has been awarded a work-study scholarship to the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in 2005-2009, and received a full fellowship to the Vermont Studio Center. She was granted a Tennessee Williams Scholarship in Fiction at the 2010 Sewanee Writers’ Conference. In 2011, she was a Scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference and in 2014 will be a fellow in Fiction.
She has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and for The Best New American Voices. Her story “Curating Your Life” was a notable story in Best American Nonrequired Reading 2010 edited by Dave Eggers. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, Salon, American Short Fiction, Memorious, Slice Magazine, Asian American Literary Review, Puerto del Sol, and Forklift, Ohio.
She was the 2010 recipient of the Wyoming Arts Council’s Frank Nelson Doubleday Memorial Writing Award and was a finalist for the 2011 Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award. She currently serves on the board of the Wyoming Arts Council. Cowboys and East Indians is a finalist for the 2014 High Plains Book Award, and on the longlist for the 2014 Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. She is at work on a novel and teaches at the University of Wyoming.
