Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, Episode 15. In this episode, we feature the poet Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie, a notable entry in our 2020 Miller Audio Prize contest.

Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie is a Zambian-Ghanaian poet who grew up in Botswana. She holds an MFA in poetry from the University of Michigan. She is a Hopwood and Meader Family Award winner as well as a finalist of: The Brunel International African Poetry Prize, The Palette Poetry Spotlight Award, The Furious Flower Poetry Prize and Wick Poetry Center's Peace Poem contest. Akosua has received fellowships from Callaloo and the Watering Hole. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in: Obsidian, Birdcoat Quarterly, Wildness, Bettering American Poetry, WusGood?, and The Felt. She is currently working on her first poetry collection.

In this series of rich, dazzling and evocative poems, Afiriyie-Hwedie strives with fierce and elegant success to articulate the body, to map it onto our moment, and to understand it as “a war,” “an open window, a loosening belt,” a project of construction in resistance to oppressive forces and open to pleasure that should be any body’s birthright. In the conflations of the divine and the gritty beauties of the material world, these poems call us to a higher understanding of ourselves, and of everyone else.

Stay tuned for Miller Aud-cast #16, coming soon. And don’t forget, submissions are open now for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. The deadline for this year’s contest is June 15. Learn all about it at our website, www.missourireview.com.

Missouri Review Podcast

Miller Aud-cast #15: Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor. Thank you for being here, wherever here might be, for episode 48, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Poetry, Bryce Berkowitz’s “Hepburn Manor, Los Angeles.”

Bryce Berkowitz is the author of Bermuda Ferris Wheel, winner of the 42 Miles Press Poetry Award. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Best New Poets, New Poetry from the Midwest, The Sewanee Review, The Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, and other publications. He teaches at Butler University. Currently, he is at work on a novel, a second poetry collection, and several TV pilots.

Here’s what he has to say in his ARTIST’s NOTE:
"I wanted to teach my students how to record podcasts—even though I’d never recorded one myself… A couple friends encouraged me to learn how to use Audacity, a free recording program, before assigning the project—wise words for obvious reasons. Instead of recording a podcast, I recorded this poem then layered some music beneath it. I’ve always read my work out loud whenever I write. There’s no better way to tap into your voice. Recording and listening helps smooth out the edges in the lines. Over 15 years ago, I used to write lyrics, make beats, perform, and record music. So, this process felt familiar, although ancient too. It was a life I’d left behind, despite enjoying it for many years. After putting together this track, I shared it with several friends who still make music, and we’ve discussed collaborating—poems to soundscapes, instrumentals, etc. We’ll see what comes of it. For now, the idea of working with old friends on new projects is exciting, and I’m looking forward to that, and I’m happy to share this piece too."

“Hepburn Manor, Los Angeles” was originally published in Muzzle Magazine. You can read or follow along here:  https://www.muzzlemagazine.com/bryce-berkowitz.html.

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #48: Bryce Berkowitz

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 49, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Audio Documentary, Genevieve Simmons “birdcast: Downtown Cincinnati”

Genevieve Simmons, or G (they/them), is a maker of music, melder of movements, and vessel of many generous mentors. Raised in the Bay Area, California, they have lived all over the world, settling most recently in London for an Msc in Environment, Politics and Development at SOAS. Please feel free to reach out if their work resonates, or you feel inspired to collaborate in any medium. 
 
Show notes: 
birdcast began as a conversation with G's dear friend Vikram about how to capture an unprecedented time of social upheaval. Listening to cries of a Red-tailed Hawk while discussing the conspiracy that birds aren’t real, they figured that beginning interviews with a question about animals might break the ice better than asking for an opinion on climate change. As a result, five birdcasts in total, spanning from Portland to Minneapolis, New Haven to Texas, can be streamed on soundcloud. Living out of a CRV for three months during quarantine, G spoke with protestors for Black Lives Matter, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar right before the election, independent business owners, and many others. They even throw in some bird facts. A mix of podcast and experimental audio, they especially enjoyed when recordings contained cacophonous cracklings and other auditory blemishes. They hope you enjoy listening, and continue to pay attention to the sounds of the world. 

Aud-cast 50 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #49: Genevieve Simmons

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here for episode 50, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Poetry, Laura Budofsky Wisniewski, with “Great Grandmother Quartet.”

Laura Budofsky Wisniewski is the author of Sanctuary, Vermont (forthcoming Orison Books, March 2022) and How to Prepare Bear (Redbird Chapbooks). Her work has appeared in Image, Hunger Mountain Review, American Journal of Poetry, Pilgrimage, Confrontation and others. She is winner of the 2020 Orison Poetry Prize, Ruminate Magazine’s 2020 Janet B. Mccabe Poetry Prize, the 2019 Poetry International Prize, and the 2014 Passager Poetry Prize. Laura lives in a small town in Vermont. 

Wisniewski notes:
I never knew my great grandmothers. Not even their names. Three of them never got out of Belarus where they were exterminated. For each woman, I had only one piece of information. I followed those single details into the poem until I met them there. I wrote “Great Grandmother Quartet” so they could would not be anonymous or forgotten.

Find out more on Facebook or visit her website: 

https://www.laurabwisniewski.com/
subscribe to THE POETRY NEWSLETTER

Aud-cast 51 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #50: Laura Budofsky Wisniewski

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 51, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Audio Documentary, “Behind the Curtain: The War for the West,” from Jacqueline Guzda.

Jackie Guzda is an Associate Professor at Western Connecticut State University where she creates Behind the Curtain, an investigative documentary podcast about current and political events.  BTC began as a political comedy podcast, evolved into an interview format and finally in its current form. It will someday return to its roots but for now Jackie serves as host of Lifelong Learners, a vlog/podcast in which she interviews amazing movers and shakers in the Educational Technology world.

Learn more about her at LinkedIn:   https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-guzda-ph-d-ba41a52a/

Episode 52 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #51: Jackie Guzda

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever that is, for episode 52, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, “Back Roads,” by Summer Hammond. 
 
Summer Hammond has traversed every state in the continental USA in a fuchsia 18-wheeler. This is her go-to 'fun fact.' Also that she and her husband, Aly, earned their bachelor's degrees online while long haul trucking. Summer went on to teach 9th grade Reading in Austin, TX. Her most recent back road adventure was: moving cross country with Aly and achieving her MFA in Fiction from the University of North Carolina Wilmington - at the tender age of 40. Her fiction and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Haunted Waters Press, Broad River Review, and the Texas Review. She is a 2021 Rash Awards in Fiction finalist. 

Artist Notes:
This piece first appeared as "Back Roads" in Sunspot Literary Journal, Volume 3, Issue #1, 2021. 

Follow Summer Hammonds on social media at the following handles: 
Twitter: @SummerDHammond
Instagram: summerdhammond

Episode 53 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #52: Summer Hammonds

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 53, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Prose, “Clarity,” from M.M. Kaufman.

M.M. Kaufman splits her time between New Orleans and Georgia. She earned an MFA in the University of New Orleans Creative Writing Workshop and holds a Fulbright Scholarship for her time teaching in Indonesia. She is the Managing Editor at Rejection Letters, reads for No Contact, manages social media for The Tennessee Williams & New Orleans Literary Festival, the Saints & Sisters LGBTQ Festival, and Micro Podcast of Literary Hub. She has work published with Slush Pile Magazine, Memoir Mixtapes, The Normal School, Hobart, Shift, Metonym Journal, Sundog Lit, Orangeblush Zine, and Our Name is Amplify. Find her on Twitter @mm_kaufman and on her website mmkaufman.com. (She/Her.)
 
"Clarity" was originally published in Hobart.
 
Social Media: Twitter @mm_kaufman and Instagram @mmkaufman.

Miller Aud-cast #54 is on its way, so stay tuned. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #53: M.M. Kaufman

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor. Thank you for being here, wherever you are, for episode 54, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Poetry, Land wo’s “Poet in exile / Poète en exil.”

Landa wo’s fiction and poetry has appeared in a variety of publications and several anthologies . With roots in Angola and Cabinda, Landa wo is an Afro-French poet member of Société des Poètes Français. Politically engaged his work deals with prominent issues of social justice, discrimination and cultural strife.
 
“Poet in exile”, Landing Places, Immigrant Poets in Ireland, Dedalus Press 2010
“Poet in exile”, 2007 Winner Metro Eireann Writing Competition judged by Roddy Doyle
‘‘Poète en exil’’, 2005 féile filíochta, International Poetry Competition Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown
 
Learn more here: 
Twitter: @wo_landa
Instagram : landa.wo
https://linktr.ee/Landa_wo

Episode 55 will be here for you before you know it, so keep a watchful ear and listening eye about you. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #54: Landa wo

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 55, featuring the latest finalist for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize in Humor, Paul Allman, with “Gravity Dance.”

Allman’s comic novel Otis: On the Occasion of His Foray into the Wilderness of Civilization, was published by St. Martin’s Press. He has also published two YA novels, The Knot and No Pain, No Gain. His award-winning essay, The Frequency, was published in Harper’s Magazine. Other stories have appeared in Film Comment, Folio, Public Illumination and Witness, where his short story We Have Time won a Pushcart Prize.

His plays have been produced by the 78th Street Theatre Lab, Theater 80 at St. Mark’s Church, the Florida Studio Theater, the Sundance Children’s Theater, Theater for the New City and The Broome Street Theater.  He was Playwright-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst and also the Sundance Institute.

Allman has taught in NYC’s Authors in the Schools Program, and led writing workshops at the YMCA of St. Louis, his home town.

Episode 56 will be here for you before you know it, so stay tuned. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #55: Paul Allman

**CW: Sexual Assault, Child Abuse**

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. I’m Marc McKee, TMR’s managing editor. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 56, “Silent No More,” from Sharon Sobatta. 

Sharon Sobotta is a writer, a reporter for Pacifica KPFA in Berkeley, California, the program director of a women's and gender equity center, a mom and a doula.

Sobatta notes:
I am submitting the story of a woman, June, whose roots are in the same small Wisconsin town as mine. I knew nothing about her (as she's five years younger than me), until she reached out to me last summer as I was in the thick of covering the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis via zoom interviews. If not for the pandemic, my girls and I would have been in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as we were every summer. June reached out with pictures of 'Justice for George Floyd' rallies from different cities in Wisconsin and shared that she was following my coverage. Along with June's posts on my social media pages, were the posts of boys who had grown into men from my hometown, who were more sympathetic with the officers or the business owners impacted by the worldwide outrage than to George Floyd, who had the life squeezed out of him under the knee of Derek Chauvin. After engaging with me over my coverage of Floyd's death and calls for police reform, June asked if she could share a piece of her writing with me. It was then that I realized that June was the Jane Doe that had been alluded to in my Wisconsin newspapers years earlier. June agreed to do an interview with me. We spoke, not for the normal thirty minutes that I usually allot for interviews but for three hours and thirty-three minutes. It turned out that June had an arsenal of traumatic experiences with a police officer in Whitehall, Wisconsin known as a nice guy. She recalled being thought of as trailer trash and being referred to first, as the daughter of the town whore and later as the town whore. This kept her silent and afraid for many years. While June ultimately was tracked down by federal investigators and became a key witness in the case against the officer, this interview was June's first time sharing her story in full. A thirty minute version of this story that also incorporated the voice and analysis of a gender sociologist aired on KPFA's International Women's Day special on March 9, 2021. The interview took place in the summer of 2020, in the midst of the pandemic lockdown.

Before you listen to this piece, I will mention that I’m not going to offer a comment after this piece. In lieu of that comment, I will offer this content warning: what follows is the chilling, terrifying, infuriating, and wrenching account of brutal sexual assault, the assault and menace of a minor, and the pathological abuse of power by someone sworn to protect and serve the very person who is targeted for abuse. What also follows is the sound of someone who has done tremendous work to move beyond being a victim to being a survivor courageously telling her story. By any measure, this is the story of human triumph in the face of staggering, grotesque horrors.

Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #56: Sharon Sobotta

Hello and welcome to Miller Aud-cast, the Missouri Review podcast where we listen to and discuss the finalists for the 2021 Miller Audio Prize. Thank you for being here, wherever here is, for episode 57, “Stories for the Ineffable,” from Maya Shanbhag Lang.

Maya Shanbhag Lang is the author of What We Carry, named a New York Times Editors’ Choice, an Amazon Best Memoir of 2020, and featured on several international “Best Of” lists. Her prose entry for the Miller Audio contest, "Stories for the Ineffable," was based on What We Carry. She is also the author of The Sixteenth of June, named a Must-Read Novel by CBS and InStyle and long listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize. The daughter of South Asian immigrants, Lang holds a PhD in Comparative Literature and lives in New York with her daughter.

And that wraps it up for the 2021 finalists for the Miller Audio Prize. Thanks most of all to all who entered, and stay tuned for an announcement to come revealing the winners, and thanks to all for their patience as we tried this new experiment. Thanks as always to the outgoing Missouri Review contest editor, Bailey Boyd, and to Patricia Miller, for her generous support for the Miller Audio Prize. 

BE ADVISED: Entries are now open for the second annual Perkoff Prize, the new opportunity from the Missouri Review which awards $3000 + publication in prizes to the poet, fiction writer, and essayist with the best work engaging the fields of health and medicine in provocative ways. Learn more on our website, or subscribe to our newsletter for weekly updates. 

As ever, TMR is open for submissions year-round, and we remain dedicated to discovering and publishing the best contemporary writing in fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Be heard. Give us the opportunity to discover you: submit your work today! In addition, we have tons of marvelous (and free!) creative content to read, listen to, and even watch on our website. Learn more at missourireview.com.

Miller Aud-cast #15: Akosua Zimba Afiriyie-Hwedie

The Missouri Review

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