In the Atelier

ATELIER VISIT WITH WRITER ANN STINSON: Recently we listened back through all of our ATELIER VISIT installments and, wow, it's a series just too damn good to leave scattered and languishing in the depths of our episode archives. So, for your pleasure, dear listener, we're gathering all these episodes together and running them back to back. These aren't interviews -- they're more intimate and creative than that -- and they're all unique in form and focus. Each is an atmospheric journey into the brilliant imaginative mind, process, and working environment of an artist sure to inspire you. You're welcome!

ANN STINSON is the author of the memoir The Ground at My Feet: Sustaining a Family and a Forest (Oregon State University Press, 2021), a Finalist for the 2023 Oregon Book Award. In this visit, she takes us outside, amid the trees of her family's forest in southwest Washington. In her writing, Stinson veers away from the narcissistic conventions of contemporary memoir to give us a book that is brilliantly capacious in spirit and form. Deeply personal, attuned to the big issues, and yet lastingly artful, The Ground at My Feet is an emotionally resonant family portrait and also a deliciously complex journey through time, strata, and culture. It's a nature book for the jaded urbanite, a grief report for the saccharine-allergic, and an account of transformational forest stewardship imbued with reverence and realism. Mentioned in this episode: the Cowlitz River; Mt. Rainier; the Columbia River; Douglas Firs; saw-whet owl; the stories of the forest; Richard Powers's book The Overstory; tree stumps and tree rings; the Cowlitz tribe; being alive to the possibilities of the future and the past; understanding the past anew; Thas-e-muth; Simon Plamondon; the literary utility of coat pockets; Rite in the Rain notebook; walking a trail for 50 years; Himalayan Blackberry; losing oneself to one's work; listening to the land.  Music: "Walking in Forests" by Ben Winwood; "Godnattsaga" by Beneath the Mountain; "Empty Beaches" by Paper Planes (All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

ATELIER VISIT WITH FILMMAKER BRIAN PADIAN: Recently we listened back through all of our ATELIER VISIT installments and, wow, it's a series just too damn good to leave scattered and languishing in the depths of our episode archives. So, for your pleasure, dear listener, we're gathering all these episodes together and running them back to back. These aren't interviews -- they're more intimate and creative than that -- and they're all unique in form and focus. Each is an atmospheric journey into the brilliant imaginative mind, process, and working environment of an artist sure to inspire you. You're welcome!

BRIAN PADIAN is the writer/director of the award-winning web series Microagressions, which played at NYC Webfest, the feature-length film The Black Sea, the web series Man of La Mansion, and the forthcoming feature-length film Sister/Brother. Mentioned in this episode: telecommuting; breakfast for the kids; day jobs; something to push against; laziness; the problems with monomaniacal ambition; monotony and the "meaningless"; Final Cut; Padian's first feature film The Black Sea; American Film Institute; Ingmar Bergman; Mike Leigh's Naked; David Lynch's Lost Highway; Jim Jarmusch's Dead Man; artist Noah Nakell; Sight & Sound magazine; Film Comment magazine; Filmmaker magazine; American Cinematographers magazine; naivete; Padian's short film "The Big Black Dark"; bookshelves as totems; screenplay versus finished film; budget limitations; screenwriting as travel planning; primacy of image, cast, and crew; the hazards of the artist's waiting and wanting; power in the doing; the Oregon coast; sneaker waves; dolly tracks; letting go; aspiration versus reality; tiny miracles. Music: "Retrospecting" by Yehezkel Raz; "Per Paura Che Si Rompa" by Bottega Baltazar; "Momentum" by Borrtex; "Roots" by I Am Fowler (All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

ATELIER VISIT WITH WRITER KRISTEN MILLARES YOUNG: Recently we listened back through all of our ATELIER VISIT installments and, wow, it's a series just too damn good to leave scattered and languishing in the depths of our episode archives. So, for your pleasure, dear listener, we're gathering all these episodes together and running them back to back. These aren't interviews -- they're more intimate and creative than that -- and they're all unique in form and focus. Each is an atmospheric journey into the brilliant imaginative mind, process, and working environment of an artist sure to inspire you. You're welcome!

KRISTEN MILLARE YOUNG's debut novel, Subduction (Red Hen Press) was named a Finalist for two International Latino Book Awards in 2020. Her writing appears in The Washington Post, The Seattle Times, the Guardian, the Los Angeles Review, Joyland Magazine, Psychology Today, Hobart, Crosscut, Moss, and elsewhere. Kristen was the researcher for the New York Times team that produced "Snow Fall: The Avalanche at Tunnel Creek," which won a Pulitzer and a Peabody. Visit KristenMYoung.com.  Mentioned in this episode: writing while standing; showing your work; taking your time; Makah Tribe; Luis Alberto Urrea; emotion and rigor; Frida Kahlo; Joan Didion; Literary Hub; mica and peeling rock; Sappho; ecstasy; mother goddess worshipping cults; Elissa Washuta; Washuta's "White Magic"; Tin House Books; Melissa Febos; Febos's "Girlhood"; Hugo House.  Music: "Walkman Snail Shoes" by Peter Spacey; "Blue Moon Cafe" by Stefano Mastronardi; "Where I Find Rest" by Sun Wash; "Bloody You" by Racoon Racoon;  "Clouds" by Stanley Gurvich. (Music used by courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist.)

ATELIER VISIT WITH WRITER BESS WINTER: Recently we listened back through all of our ATELIER VISIT installments and, wow, it's a series just too damn good to leave scattered and languishing in the depths of our episode archives. So, for your pleasure, dear listener, we're gathering all these episodes together and running them back to back. These aren't interviews -- they're more intimate and creative than that -- and they're all unique in form and focus. Each is an atmospheric journey into the brilliant imaginative mind, process, and working environment of an artist sure to inspire you. You're welcome!

BESS WINTER's debut short story collection, Machines of Another Era, appeared from Gold Wake Press in January 2021. Her work appears in American Short Fiction, Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International, and elsewhere, and has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and the American Short[er] Fiction Prize. An Assistant Professor of English at Eastern Illinois University, she’s Editor-in-Chief of Bluestem Magazine. Visit BessWinter.com. Mentioned in this episode: Urbana, IL; Roger Ebert; David Foster Wallace; Stanley Elkin; William Gass; old dolls; ghosts. Music: "Deep Brown Eyes" and "Grace" by Raccoon Racoon (Music used courtesy of the artist through a licensing agreement with Artlist.)

ATELIER VISIT WITH WRITER WOODY SKINNER: Recently we listened back through all of our ATELIER VISIT installments and, wow, it's a series just too damn good to leave scattered and languishing in the depths of our episode archives. So, for your pleasure, dear listener, we're gathering all these episodes together and running them back to back. These aren't interviews -- they're more intimate and creative than that -- and they're all unique in form and focus. Each is an atmospheric journey into the brilliant imaginative mind, process, and working environment of an artist sure to inspire you. You're welcome!

WOODY SKINNER's debut short story collection, A Thousand Distant Radios, was published by Atelier26 Books and was a semi-finalist for PEN America's  PEN/Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction. His work has won the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Award and appeared in Mid-American Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Hobart, Booth, Another Chicago Magazine, and elsewhere. Mentioned in this episode: chalkware cowboys; 1950s beer cans; cluttered desk-space; mid-century masculinity; Arkansas; Cincinnati, OH; Chicago, IL; objects and the imagination; Luke Geddes' novel Heart of Junk; Bess Winter's Machines of Another Era; Skinner's short story "The Knife Salesman"; writing in coffee shops; crust punks; scones; the value of corporate environments; the virtues of boredom. Music: "Winner" by Ofrin; "Tunnel Vision" and "Memories" by Stanley Gurvich; "Lost in the Future" by Swirling Ship (All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

ATELIER VISIT WITH HARRIET SCOTT CHESSMAN: Recently we listened back through all of our ATELIER VISIT installments and, wow, it's a series just too damn good to leave scattered and languishing in the depths of our episode archives. So, for your pleasure, dear listener, we're gathering all these episodes together and running them back to back. These aren't interviews -- they're more intimate and creative than that -- and they're all unique in form and focus. Each is an atmospheric journey into the brilliant imaginative mind, process, and working environment of an artist sure to inspire you. You're welcome!

HARRIET SCOTT CHESSMAN has published two novels with Atelier26 Books: The Beauty of Ordinary Things and Someone Not Really Her Mother. Her latest novel is The Lost Sketchbook of Edgar Degas. She wrote the libretto for the opera My Lai, a commission by Kronos Performing Arts Association with music composed by Jonathan Berger. On April 23, 2022 a concert version was performed at Carnegie Hall. Her new opera, Sycorax, created in collaboration with Austrian composer Georg Friedrich Haas, was performed at Buehnen Bern Theater in Bern, Switzerland, in 2022. Mentioned in this episode: A room of one's own; woodland vistas; spareness and light; Ikea desks; poetry; haiku; breath; writing librettos; opera; My Lai; The Tempest; justice; the writer's connection to -- and contribution to -- the world. Music: "Ballerina" by Yehezkel Raz;  "Ever I Wander" by Jameson Nathan Jones; "Afternoon Mist" by Yehezkel Raz (All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

ATELIER TALK, EP. 1: ARE YOU SERIOUS? -- David R. Roth is the author of the novel The Femme Fatale Hypothesis (Regal House Publishing, 2021). His stories are set in or shaped by life in the small Delaware River town in which he has lived for over three decades. M. Allen Cunningham is the author, most recently, of the novel Q&A (Regal House Publishing, 2021) and the producer and host of In the Atelier and Thoreau's Leaves: the Thoreau Podcast. He teaches creative writing at Portland State University and elsewhere. The springboard for this Atelier Talk is the first question in this interview from The New York Review of Books. (https://www.nybooks.com/online/2022/11/05/gods-of-chaos-and-stupidity-joshua-cohen/) Mentioned in this episode: 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner Joshua Cohen • New York Review of Books • The writer’s seriousness & the writer’s subject • The writer’s seriousness & the market • Moby-Dick • Kent Haruf’s Our Souls at Night • Haruf’s Plainsong Trilogy • Subject versus treatment • The need to be read • The “sanctity” of fiction • Communication as consequence • The circuit of creativity, thought, expression • A paltry number of readers • Focusing on one reader at a time • Many angles on seriousness • The reader’s perspective on what makes writing serious • Genre-writing and seriousness • C.S. Lewis’s An Experiment in Criticism • What kind of reading does the writing encourage? • Georges Simenon • Simenon's The Stain on the Snow • Dashiell Hammett • Louise Erdrich’s Justice Trilogy • Literary crime novels • Genre expectations • Form versus formula • “Blood-red lips” • Attention elicits attention • Satisfactions of form • Lasting reading experiences versus beach reads • Elmore Leonard • Francine Prose’s Reading Like a Writer • The importance of achieving more than one thing • Writing as human expression • 3 questions about the reading experience • James Baldwin’s “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American” • Baldwin's Nobody Knows My Name • Impatience with interiority • Teju Cole • Trusting in the reader’s seriousness • The writer’s seriousness and the writer’s daily discipline • Toni Morrison • Reading seriously as a writer • Becoming more and more judgmental, unforgiving, and incorrigible • Letting the unconscious continue the work • Showing up and waiting • Writers have to write.

OPPORTUNITY & INSPIRATION: A famous author's invitation leads to a lesson about opportunity and the unexpected forms inspiration can take. Mentioned in this episode: Denis Johnson; Johnson's "Jesus' Son"; Johnson's "Tree of Smoke"; National Book Award. Music: "Anthem of a Quirky Hipster" by Rex Banner; "Lemonade" by Shtriker Big Band; "The Beat of the Land" by Assaf Ayalon (All music used by courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

ATELIER VISIT WITH WRITER BESS WINTER: Atelier Visits take you into the creative workspaces of artists we admire. We're asking writers, visual artists, musicians, and filmmakers to bring you right inside their respective ateliers and share a bit about their process, their creative preoccupations, whatever is on their minds lately. It's an opportunity to spend a little while with various brilliant people who are busy doing good imaginative, artistic work. They'll speak to us directly about what life and creativity is like for them. Bess Winter's debut short story collection, Machines of Another Era, appeared from Gold Wake Press in January 2021. Her work appears in American Short Fiction, Gettysburg Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Ecotone, W.W. Norton’s Flash Fiction International, and elsewhere, and has been awarded a Pushcart Prize and the American Short[er] Fiction Prize. An Assistant Professor of English at Eastern Illinois University, she’s Editor-in-Chief of Bluestem Magazine. Visit BessWinter.com. Mentioned in this episode: Urbana, IL; Roger Ebert; David Foster Wallace; Stanley Elkin; William Gass; old dolls; ghosts. Music: "Deep Brown Eyes" and "Grace" by Raccoon Racoon (Music used courtesy of the artist through a licensing agreement with Artlist.) This episode reprised from the ITA archives.

THE VALUE OF TRAVEL: Reflections on travel and inspiration, on travel and parenting, on travel and expense, and on travel as a personal, creative, and maybe even moral responsibility. Mentioned in this episode: where ideas come from; spurring inspiration; child-rearing; American passport holders; innumerable (and numerable) benefits of travel; the "go while you're young" mindset; travel and affordability; travel as excessive expense; prioritizing travel; serendipity; artists on national currency; small cultural differences; Adam Gopnick; Gopnick's Paris to the Moon; unquantifiable value; bringing a child abroad. Music: "Mood" by We Are the Good; "Flight of the Inner Bird" by Sivan Talmor; "Lives" by Angel Salazar (All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist.)

LOON CHECKERS, from THOREAU'S LEAVES -- An October day in a boat on Walden, and "a pretty game, played on the smooth surface of the pond, a man against a loon." (From Walden, "Brute Neighbors") Loon sounds by Andrew Spencer, XC 189383 (accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/189383); and Todd Wilson, XC103421 (accessible at www.xeno-canto.org/103421). Music: "Love You" by Yehezkel Raz; "Revelations" by Tristan Barton (All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

Hear more from Thoreau's Leaves at anchor.fm/thoreausleaves

WHY STORIES MATTER: Thoughts about the questions our most enduring stories ask and the effects these stories achieve.  

Mentioned in this episode: Wendell Berry; Northern California; Mount Diablo; The Green Age of Asher Witherow; John Steinbeck; Steinbeck's East of Eden; Salinas, California; regionalism; cynical critics; Nobel Prize; Book of Genesis; Barry Lopez; mythology; Wallace Stegner; Stegner's "The Sense of Place"; Carl Jung; Harold Bloom; Bloom's "Anxiety of Influence." Music: "Unplanned Run" by Stanley Gurvich; "Fall" by ANBR; "King of Mandol" by Swirling Ship (All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

This episode reprised from the ITA archives.

WHAT RESISTS US HELPS US: Imposed limitation can galvanize the imagination. So here's to "salutary antagonisms!" 

Mentioned in this episode: Ethan Canin; Canin's "Emperor of the Air"; Canin's short story, "Accountant"; Annie Proulx; John Dewey; Dewey's "Art As Experience" (1934); Katherine Anne Porter; Samuel Taylor Coleridge; Wallace Stegner's "Crossing to Safety" 

Music: "Puddles" by Stanley Gurvitch; "Continent" by ANBR; "Sparkle" by Maya Isac; "Vuelta al Sol" by Tomas Novoa; "Befun" by Befun (All music used by courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist)

This episode reprised from the ITA archives.

DENIS JOHNSON, FAME, & THE 2,000-PAGE RULE: A story of an invitation received many years ago from legendary author Denis Johnson, and lessons learned about opportunity and the unexpected forms inspiration can take. Mentioned in this episode: Johnson's "Jesus' Son"; Johnson's "Tree of Smoke"; National Book Award. Music: "Anthem of a Quirky Hipster" by Rex Banner; "Lemonade" by Shtriker Big Band; "The Beat of the Land" by Assaf Ayalon (All music used by courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist). This episode reprised from the ITA Archives.

ATELIER SPECIAL: LET US PRAISE THE PUBLIC LIBRARY -- Atelier Specials feature original creative content including essays, fiction, and excerpts. Today: an essay by M. Allen Cunningham, slightly abridged. "Let Us Praise the Public Library" was originally published as a special 3-part series in The Oregonian. You can read the complete essay at medium.com/@M_A_Cunningham. Mentioned in this episode: Portland, Oregon; Multnomah County Library; Victor Hugo; Charles Dickens; Mark Twain; Herodotus; J.M. Whistler; Charles Kingsley; Jorge Luis Borges; Toni Morrison; John Steinbeck; the Library of Alexandria; Der Spiegel; Virginia Quarterly Review; Hypnerotomachia Poliphili; Aldus Manutius; American civic life; democratic institutions; The Oregonian.  Music: "Mythological" by Ofrin; "Do Your Thing" by Guesthouse; "Thoughts" by ANBR; "Settle Down" by Giants and Pilgrims; "Shallow Water" by Sivan Talmor; "Betula Lenta" by Shahar Haziza (All music used courtesy of the artists through a licensing agreement with Artlist.)