CUT + PASTE

I'm so thrilled to be back in the studio after a five-year hiatus!

This conversation (watch it here) with my friend Nicole Haroutunian was the perfect way to do it.

We've been participating in Lenka Clayton's Artist Residency in Motherhood (ARIM) together since 2018. The Cut + Paste ARIM community we're a part of and her friendship have both been a huge bolster to my creative life these past five years.

Nicole's beautiful new novel-in-stories CHOOSE THIS NOW (Noemi Press, 2024) is summed up pretty perfectly in this advance praise from Ananda Lima: "Haroutunian uses significant moments as a painter might use planes of light to create a depiction that is moving, beautiful, and true. The novel masterfully works with time, showing its presence and effects on the characters’ lives, but also using it as a means to craft deeper multidimensional pictures of each person’s core, incorporating but transcending their roles as mothers, children, workers, artists, or friends."

Nicole is also the author of the story collection SPEED DREAMING (Little A, 2015) and her fiction has most recently appeared in Story and The Georgia Review. She works in museum education, holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, and lives with her family in Woodside, Queens.

Check out her Large Hearted Boy playlist featured at the end of the show for song notes and more!

Aired May 10, 2024

Lara Vapnyar spoke with me about her process behind the most autobiographical of her novels, DIVIDE ME BY ZERO. We talked about the intersections of love and math, the boundaries between writer and character, writing in English versus her mother tongue, and her fascination with Staten Island.

This interview is only 45 minutes long (as opposed to my usual hour and a half) so I hope you’l make time to listen. I love the grainy, moody quality of it - it was a camera issue but feels right for our conversation.

Lara’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Harper's, and Vogue. She is a recipient of the Guggenheim fellowship and the Goldberg Prize for Jewish fiction, and she teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Columbia University.

Listen to Lara’s Spotify playlist for the show here.

Aired 11/2/19

Elizabeth Rush and I spoke for over an hour and a half (!) about her book RISING which was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction, won the National Outdoor Book Award, and was one of the best books of 2018 according to five different lists.

In the time it took her to write this book, predictions of how much the seas will rise by the end of this century doubled. We talked about one of the most progressive adaptation techniques to sea level rise playing out on Staten Island, where residents of Oakwood Beach negotiated a managed retreat from their homes after Hurricane Sandy. (Elizabeth was teaching at the College of Staten Island when Hurricane Sandy hit the eastern shore of the island with a 20 foot storm surge, taking 24 lives.) We also talked about birds, managing anxiety and grief around climate change, violence against women and how that mirrors our relationship with Mother Earth, the climate crisis as a reproductive crisis (for ALL species), glacier loss (she is one of the first humans ever to see Thwaites Glacier in Antartica), hope, beauty, intimacy, and poetry.

Elizabeth is currently the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artist and Writer, and teaches at Brown University. Learn more about her here.

Aired October 1, 2019

Watch the show where 9 poets join me in the studio—like an open mic without having to take the ferry.

The Staten Island NINE Lineup

Staten Island's first poet laureate, Marguerite Maria Rivas kicks off the show with a poem by the late Catherine Murray, then shares a couple of her own gems.

18:28 Wil Wynn reads emotionally-intense love poems in both Spanish and English. Even if you can't understand Spanish, you will feel his meaning. 

30:40 Lisa Conway is an emerging poet who writes about Staten Island, grief, and snack culture at Little League baseball games. Keep your eyes on her! 

40:35 M.A. Dennis, our local haiku master with his very own Shaolin monk, captivated me with his long form piece, I Am Poetry. Buy his new self-titled debut collection here. 

52:00 Jen Fitzgerald, who worked behind the scenes to push for a local poet laureate, is creator and destroyer as she takes us into infinity and beyond, and we find ourselves right back where we started, at home. 

1:05:30 Rocio Uchofen is a Peruvian-American poet who also reads in both Spanish and English--in fact, she has her own Maker Park Radio literary talk show, Hibrido Literario.  

1:19:25 Douglas G. Cala shared poems straight from his marble notebook (love!).

1:35:00 Ellen T. Dotts gets right down to business and starts her set with a poem about her uterus. "If it's going up in flames, let me pour my own gasoline." Yes.

1:42:25 Alysia Vargas shares poetry centered around coming of age as a Puerto Rican millennial on Staten Island. A perfect way to close out the show.

Aired 5/18/19

Watch my conversation with Staten Islander Eddie Joyce about the leap he took when he quit his job, just as his twin daughters were born, to write. The result was SMALL MERCIES, a 9/11 novel set on Staten Island that Kirkus Reviews called "an emotionally rich debut" and wrote that "if Staten Island were Asbury Park, this former lawyer-turned-novelist would be its literary Springsteen." Agreed.

We also talked about the magic behind Books Are Magic, a bookstore in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn. Eddie is a co-owner (though he described himself more as the "gallbladder") and gives a glimpse into what it takes to run a successful bookstore. (Lots of events.) Yes, I asked if and when they are going to expand to Staten Island. You'll have to watch the video for his answer.

Listen to Eddie’s Spotify playlist for SMALL MERCIES here.

Aired 4/20/19.

Watch my conversation with Staten Islander Alex Gilvarry about how he crafted his two delightfully good novels, EASTMAN WAS HERE and FROM THE MEMOIRS OF A NON-ENEMY COMBATANT, and about the writing life in general. Alex is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree (did I mention his books are good?) and his writing has appeared in The Paris Review, The New York Times Book Review, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. Keep an eye out for his next book, which just might be set on the island.

Listen to Alex’s Spotify playlist for EASTMAN WAS HERE here.

Aired 3/16/19.

Watch my conversation with Staten Islander Bridget Marmion, who spent over three decades as SVP of Marketing at Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Random House, and HMH. She’s worked on campaigns for Susan Sontag, Colin Powell, Jonathan Safran Foer, Tim O’Brien, Jhumpa Lahiri, Philip Roth, Madeleine L’Engle, Tom Wolfe, and more. She also helped launch or promote special anniversaries and movie releases including THE POLAR EXPRESS and LORD OF THE RINGS. In 2012, she launched Bridget Marmion Book Marketing, a full-service firm for authors. it was so special speaking with someone who loves books and authors as much as she clearly does. I felt that, through her, I was somehow in the presence of the great literary artists she's worked with.

31:52: Should people do a book tour or is social media the new book tour?

33:45: What media triggers sales? 

36:25: What does she think about the Authors Guild 2018 Author Income Survey, which found that the median income from writing has dropped 42% from 2009, landing at $6k.

44:00: What is metadata and how does it relate to books?

48:20: How important are book titles? What’s the formula?

54:15: Bridget shares stories about writers she's worked with, including Maurice Sendak and Isaac Singer.

Listen to Bridget’s Spotify playlist here.

Aired 1/19/19

Watch my conversation with New York Times bestselling crime novelist and TV writer Peter Blauner (SUNRISE HIGHWAY, PROVING GROUND / Law & Order: SVU, Blue Bloods). He sure knows how to read his work aloud, and a thing or two about writing. We talked about what it's like to get into the character of a serial killer, the best writing advice he got from Pete Hamill, the uncanny world of research, the novel as social commentary, what Chris Rock can teach writers about reading their work aloud, writing for television, music, and more. 

Listen to Peter’s Spotify playlist for SUNRISE HIGHWAY here.

Aired 12/5/18

Watch my conversation with Staten Island’s hottest mystery noir writer Rob Hart. He is the author of five novels, a short story collection, and a novella with James Patterson. We spoke about his first standalone novel, THE WAREHOUSE, selling in 21 countries and getting optioned for film by Ron Howard, and about POTTER’S FIELD which is partly set on Staten Island.

Listen to Rob’s Spotify playlist here.

Aired 9/30/18

Watch my conversation with Staten Island poets Jen Fitzgerald and Jessica R. Kratz, who shared their different perspectives on what it means to be a writer from the island. They also spoke about their collective effort to explore the possibility of naming the borough's first poet laureate. They read a lot of poetry--all by Staten Island poets--and we spoke about the work they are doing to bring the writing/slam community on the island together.

Listen to their Spotify playlist here.

Aired 6/24/18

Watch my conversation with Rachel Simon and Olivia Worden, who both teach at Pace University and at the Social Justice Collective at Sarah Lawrence College. We spoke about how to approach social justice issues in the writing classroom. They provide insights and practical advice not only for teachers but for anyone looking to approach difficult conversations more thoughtfully and with more grace.

Listen to their Spotify playlist here.

Aired 5/19/18

Watch this! I met Jessica Kane in Brian Morton's novel-writing workshop at Sarah Lawrence College when we were both MFA students. We read each other's first novels-in-progress. Hers has become a memoir about her mother's struggle with mental illness that she recently won a grant from the Lower Adirondack Regional Arts Council to finish. We talked about the comedy of dysfunction, perceived reality made manifest, writing that becomes a second self, the shame of not-yet-finished projects, documenting life so that it becomes material for art, her country music, her audio stories for children and adults, and her paper cutouts. 

Listen to Jessica’s audio stories for adults or for children.

Aired 4/21/18

Did you know that the editor-in-chief of Poets & Writers lives on Staten Island? I know! What luck! I asked him all about it, about everything in publishing that’s changed in the last 20 years that he’s been there, and if he would read some of his own poetry on the air for us (he did, and you’ll be glad). Watch us live.

Listen to Kevin’s playlist on Spotify.

Aired 3/17/18

Watch me go unscripted! Author Amy Shearn and I organized an Artist Residency in Motherhood for over 50 women from around the world during Super Bowl Weekend 2018. This meant we spent all weekend writing, and someone else was taking care of the kids. We’ve since done two ARIM weekends a year as a group. This show is all about balancing our writing and mother selves. It’s one of the best things that’s come out of Cut + Paste for me personally. Thanks, Amy!

Listen to our writer mom Spotify playlist here.

Aired 2/17/18.

I interviewed Mary Gannon when she was at the Academy of American Poets, before she became the executive director of CLMP. We spoke about the relevance of poetry, funding for the arts, Emily Dickinson, Instapoets, her most memorable interviews from her days as editor-in-chief of Poets & Writers, and living on Staten Island. We also spoke about her chapbook-in-progress and her own writing life and work. Mary has had such a stellar career in the literary arts and it was a real treat to be able to talk with her.

Listen to Mary’s Spotify playlist for the show here.

Aired on 1/20/18.

I interviewed Marguerite Maria Rivas before she became Staten Island’s first-ever poet laureate (though she was known as the de facto poet laureate then). We talked about her 9/11 poems, maintaining her craft as a single mom, writing in the woods of Staten Island, the literary history here, and so much more.

Listen to Marguerite’s Spotify playlist here.

Aired on 12/16/17

Listen to my conversation with authors Shelly Oria and Nelly Reifler about their super interesting collaborative writing project—a linked short story collection (DEAD IS THE NEW ALIVE) that you can get a glimpse of in BOMB or Guernica.

Listen to Shelly and Nelly’s Spotify playlist (inspired by their collection) here.

Recorded live (in a sweltering studio) on 10/21/17.

Listen to my conversation with author Amy Shearn. She was the perfect guest to have on my show at a time when I didn’t know how I’d make it back to the page as a new mom. Her second novel, The Mermaid of Brooklyn, provided a launching point for a hopeful and honest conversation around writing and mothering. In fact, this show was the inspiration for an amazing experience Amy and I curated and shared, and spoke about in a follow-up show called An Artist Residency in Motherhood.

Listen to Amy’s Spotify playlist here.

Recorded live on 9/16/17.

Listen to my conversation with one of the most active poets in the spoken word scene on Staten Island. He’s been on four national slam teams, wrote two poetry collections and three chapbooks, holds an MFA from the New School, and is a co-founding editor of two independent presses: great weather for MEDIA and NYSAI Press. We talked about the island’s opioid crisis and poetry as a way to heal. His work is funny and dark at the same time, and you should definitely check him out.

Listen to his Spotify playlist here.

Recorded live on 8/19/17

My very first guest was my brother-in-law, Dan-el Padilla Peralta. He is the author of UNDOCUMENTED and a professor of classics at Princeton University. We spoke about his journey from a homeless shelter to the Ivy Leagues, about dreamers and undocumented students and immigration policy, about the relevance of the classics, about New York City and the Dominican Republic, hip hop and rap, and about writing a memoir. The recording of our show is not available—but I’m working on recovering it. Check out his book in the meantime.