Origins: The International Writing Program Podcast

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Australian writer Julienne van Loon about her forthcoming collection of essays titled, The Thinking Woman, due out in March 2019 by NewSouth Books. Focused on six living, contemporary women thinkers, writers, and philosophers, van Loon engages with their work and their ideas on work, wonder, play, and much more. Van Loon also discusses her novel-in-progress, Instructions for a Steep Decline, and about how research can be a playful creative practice.

Host Kathleen Maris Paltrineri talks with Japanese poet Yoshimasu Gozo about literary translation and his recent collection from New Directions, titled Alice Iris Red Horse: Selected Poems of Yoshimasu Gozo. They also discuss the relationship of touch, sound, color, and fragment in building creative worlds as well as the poet’s transcription of poet and philosopher Yoshimoto Takaaki’s poetry as a form of honoring his work.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Ugandan science fiction writer and filmmaker Dilman Dila about his work in teaching storytelling to filmmakers. They also talk about how his disability propelled him into becoming an artist.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with London-based Singaporean writer Sharlene Teo about her award-winning novel Ponti. They discuss how her novel utilizes the Southeast Asian mythical creature of the Pontianak, a cannibalistic entity that kills and eats men, to explore a cultural reassignment of fear.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Somali-Italian writer Ubah Cristina Ali Farah about how her novels tell the stories of the Somali civil war and its refugees in Italy. They also discuss her work of collecting stories from migrant women for oral history projects, and the role Somali theatre played in anti-colonial fights during the 1950s and 1960s.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with German writer Esther Dischereit about her groundbreaking work Joëmis Tisch – Eine jüdische Geschichte [Joëmi's Table – A Jewish Story], which is a collection of thoughts, questions, and problems regarding life as a Jewish person in postwar Germany. They also discuss her collaborative creative works, and her efforts toward discovering what is revealed when examining the relationship between truth and doubt.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Burmese poet Maung Day about defying censorship with performance art and the history of Burmese poetry as well as his translation between Burmese and English of poetry and literature.

Guest host Kathleen Maris Paltrineri talks with Zimbabwean and South African writer Panashe Chigumadzi about literature’s relationship to feminism, jazz, and anti-racist discourse as well as Chigumadzi’s forthcoming collection of essays,

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Hungarian writer, Kinga Tóth, about national identity, as well as her award winning project

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Macedonian writer, Vladimir Martinovski, about the music of verse, as well as writing in Macedonian literature.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Kenyan writer Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor about the courage of addressing historical darknesses, as well as her first novel, Dust.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Basque writer Kirmen Uribe about his literary achievements in The New Yorker and elsewhere, as well as his novel Bilbao-New York-Bilbao.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Indian poet and translator Akhil Katyal about the influence of the poet Agha Shahid Ali, the technique of writing in different languages, as well as his forthcoming work, The Doubleness of Sexuality: Idioms of Same-Sex Desire in Modern India.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Mauritian writer Shenaz Patel about the recognition of the sovereignty of Chagos Archipelago, as well as her Novel, Le Silence des Chago.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with South African writer Zp Priya Dala about being a psychologist and physical therapist and the Black Consciousness Movement, as well as her novel, The Architecture of Loss.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Palestinian writer Alice Yousef about the difficulties of writing in Arabic and overcoming the challenges of portraying the complicated subjects presented as a part of the Palestinian experience, as well as her poem, How to Survive an Evening in a War Zone.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Cypriot writer Stephanos Stepanides about the complexity of the notion of home and the creative and subversive nature of literary translation, as well as his film, Poets in No Man's Land.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Finnish writer Henriikka Tavi about the rebirth of Finnish literature, conceptualism, publishing, and her new novel that is as she says, “Gertrude Stein meets chick lit.”

Host Christopher Merrill talks with Argentinian writer Mariano Tenconi Blanco about his play, Everything would make sense if death did not exist, about the way he works with slang and voice to shape character, his admiration for Jorge Luis Borges, and the ways that he creates a procedure, or a hypothesis, around which his plays are organized.

Host Christopher Merrill talks with New Zealand writer Courtney Sina Meredith about her latest book of stories, Tail of the Taniwha, and their underlying Pasifika Politique. They also discuss the strength Meredith receives from her family and her community, and the importance of mentorship amongst artists.