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Write On, Mississippi!
Write On, Mississippi: Season 3. Chapter 16: Tim Fielder, John Jennings and Donna-lyn Washington
Join three giants in the world of Afrofuturist comics in this compelling conversation between two Mississippi natives, Tim Fielder and John Jennings, along with University Press of MIssissippi contributing writer, Donna-lyn Washington.
Tim Fielder is an Illustrator, concept designer, cartoonist, and animator born in Tupelo, Mississippi, and raised in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He has a lifelong love of Visual Afrofutuism, Pulp entertainment, and action films. He holds other Afrofuturists such as Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, Pedro Bell and Overton Lloyd as major influences. He has worked over the years in the storyboarding, film visual development, gaming, comics, and animation industries for clients as varied as Marvel Comics, The Village Voice, Tri-Star Pictures, to Ubisoft Entertainment. He also works as an educator for institutions such as the New York Film
Academy and Howard University. Tim hopes to push forward with his art in the emerging digital content delivery systems of the day. His project, Matty’s Rocket, is a product from his company Dieselfunk Studios. Tim also is the author and illustrator of the upcoming graphic novel, ‘INFINITUM: An Afrofuturist Tale’, published by HarperCollins Amistad in January 2021. Tim makes an empty nest with his wife in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Harlem.
JOHN JENNINGS is a Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California at Riverside. Jennings is co-editor of the Eisner Award-winning collection The Blacker the Ink: Constructions of the Black Identity in Comics and Sequential Art. Jennings is also a 2016 Nasir Jones Hip Hop Studies Fellow with the Hutchins Center at Harvard University. Jennings’ current projects include the horror anthology Box of Bones, the coffee table book Black Comix Returns (with Damian Duffy), and the Eisner-winning, Bram Stoker Award-winning, New York Times best-selling graphic novel adaptation of Octavia Butler’s classic dark fantasy novel Kindred. Duffy and Jennings recently released their graphic novelization of Octavia Bulter’s prescient dystopian novel Parable of the Sower (Abrams ComicArts). Jennings is also founder and curator of the ABRAMS Megascope line of graphic novels.
Donna-lyn Washington edited John Jennings: Conversations, part of the University Press of Mississippi's Conversations with Comic Artists Series. She is adjunct lecturer of English at Kingsborough Community College, and she is also senior editor and senior writer at ReviewFix. She has contributed to Rediscovering Frank Yerby: Critical Essays, published by University Press of Mississippi, as well as entries to the Encyclopedia of Black Comics.
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5. Write On, Mississippi: Season 6, Chapter 5: Patrick deWitt
31:34Join New York Times bestselling author Patrick deWitt as he talks to Matt Sawyer about his newest novel, The Librarianist. The story follows retired librarian Bob Comet. The book is billed as a wide-ranging and ambitious document of the introvert's condition. Patrick deWitt: Patrick deWitt is the author of the novels French Exit (a national bestseller), The Sisters Brothers (a New York Times bestseller short-listed for the Booker Prize), and the critically acclaimed Undermajordomo Minor and Ablutions. Born in British Columbia, he has also lived in California and Washington, and now resides in Portland, Oregon.HostMatt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.
6. Write On, Mississippi: Season 6, Chapter 6: Tyriek White
34:40Writer, educator, musician, and University of Mississippi MFA graduate from Brooklyn, NY, delves into his debut novel We Are a Haunting.Tyriek White: Tyriek Rashawn White is a writer, musician, and educator from Brooklyn, NY. He is currently the media director of Lampblack Literary Foundation, which seeks to provide mutual aid and various resources to Black writers across the diaspora. He has received fellowships from Callaloo Writing Workshop, New York State Writers Institute, and Key West Writers' Workshop, among other honors. He holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Mississippi.HostMatt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.
4. Write On, Mississippi: Season 6, Chapter 4: Jamila Minnicks
31:29Winner of the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction delves into her debut novel, Moonrise Over New Jessup, with Story Made Project podcast host Matt Sawyer.Jamila Minnicks: Jamila Minnicks’ novel Moonrise Over New Jessup (Algonquin Books, 2023) won the 2021 PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction. In 2022, she was awarded a Tennessee Williams scholarship for the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and she also earned a residency at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Her short fiction and essays have been published in CRAFT, Catapult, Blackbird, The Write Launch, and elsewhere. Her piece, Politics of Distraction, was nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Minnicks is a graduate of the University of Michigan, the Howard University School of Law, and the Georgetown University Law Center. She lives in Washington, DC.HostMatt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.
1. Write On, Mississippi: Season 6, Chapter 1: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle
30:16Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle discusses her debut novel, Even As We Breath, with her friend and fellow North Carolinian, Matt Sawyer. The book made Clapsaddle the first member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians the first member to publish a novel.Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle: Annette Saunooke Clapsaddle, an enrolled citizen of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and resides in Qualla, NC with her husband, Evan and sons Ross and Charlie. She holds degrees from Yale University and the College of William and Mary. Her debut novel, Even As We Breathe, was released by the University Press of Kentucky in 2020, a finalist for the Weatherford Award and named one of NPR's Best Books of 2020. In 2021, it received the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award. Her first novel manuscript, Going to Water is winner of the Morning Star Award for Creative Writing from the Native American Literature Symposium (2012) and a finalist for the PEN/Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction (2014). Clapsaddle's work has appeared in Yes! Magazine, Lit Hub, Smoky Mountain Living Magazine, South Writ Large, Our State Magazine and The Atlantic. After serving as executive director of the Cherokee Preservation Foundation, Annette returned to teaching at Swain County High School for over a dozen years. She is the former co-editor of the Journal of Cherokee Studies and serves on the Board of Directors for the Museum of the Cherokee Indian and is the President of the Board of Trustees for the North Carolina Writers Network. Clapsaddle established Bird Words, LLC in 2022 and works as an independent contractor and consultant.HostMatt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.
3. Write On, Mississippi: Season 6, Chapter 3: James McBride
49:10Listen in as America's storyteller, James McBride, discusses his latest masterpiece, The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store, with guest host and one of McBride's biggest fans, Matt Sawyer. James McBride: James McBride is the author of the New York Times-bestselling Oprah's Book Club selection Deacon King Kong, the National Book Award-winning The Good Lord Bird, the American classic The Color of Water, the novels Song Yet Sung and Miracle at St. Anna, the story collection Five-Carat Soul, and Kill 'Em and Leave, a biography of James Brown. The recipient of a National Humanities Medal and an accomplished musician, McBride is also a distinguished writer in residence at New York University.HostMatt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.
2. Write On, Mississippi: Season 6, Chapter 2: Harrison Scott Key
36:56Join our guest host, Matt Sawyer, creator of the Story Made Project podcast, as he chats with one of America's favorite humorists, Harrison Scott Key, about his newest memoir, How to Stay Married: The Craziest Love Story Ever Told. Hear how Harrison balances humor with gut-wrenching honesty and self-examination.Harrison Scott Key: Harrison Scott Key is the author of three books, including his newest book, How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told, as well as The World's Largest Man (winner of the Thurber Prize for American Humor) and Congratulations, Who Are You Again?, the inspiration for his popular TEDx talk, "The Funny Thing About the American Dream," featured at TED.com. He is executive dean at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) in Savannah, Georgia.HostMatt Sawyer: Matt is an educator, podcaster, writer, and hip-hop artist based in Macon County, North Carolina. He is the creator of the Story Made Project, an exploration for and of stories that make a difference in our world.
8. Write On, Mississippi: Season 5, Chapter 8: Michael W. Twitty
31:44Sit back, relax, bring your appetite, and listen in on a conversation between our host, Ebony Lumumba, and James Beard award-winning food writer and historian, Michael W. Twitty. In Twitty’s newest, Koshersoul, he takes us on a personal journey through African and Jewish culinary traditions.
3. Write On, Mississippi: Season 5, Chapter 3: Rinker Buck
38:08Join book festival board member Chris Goodwin as he chats with Rinker Buck about his latest nonfiction triumph, Life on the Mississippi: An Epic American Adventure. Buck gives Goodwin the nuts and bolts of building and maneuvering a historic flatboat down the Mississippi to New Orleans.
6. Write On, Mississippi: Season 5, Chapter 6: Juhea Kim
29:32Join our guest host, Sarah Story, as she talks with Juhea Kim about her debut novel, Beasts of a Little Land, an epic story of love, war, and redemption set against the backdrop of the Korean independence movement, following the intertwined fates of a young girl sold to a courtesan school and the penniless son of a hunter.