Off-Leash Writing / Off-Leash Arts

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Podcast

Off-Leash Arts: Conversations About Creativity is a podcast in which host Tanya Shaffer talks with artists from a range of disciplines about the creative process.

Writer and Teacher Laurie Wagner: Pray That You Get Lost

Laurie Wagner has been publishing books and essays and teaching writing for the last 25 years. In her Wild Writing classes, she helps people unzip what’s inside them and get ink on the page. Laurie teaches online and takes people around the world to places like Kathmandu; San Miguel de Allende and Oaxaca, Mexico; and Taos, New Mexico. Her books include Living Happily Ever After: Couples Talk about Lasting Love, and Expectations: 30 Women Talk about Becoming a Mother. She was also a writer on the Oscar-nominated documentary For Better or For Worse. Laurie was a teacher and mentor of Off-Leash Arts host, Tanya Shaffer. In this conversation, the two women talk about the trajectory that led Laurie from journalism to work in the publishing industry to leading Wild Writing workshops, her strategy of “lowering our gaze,” and the transformational power of naming things exactly as they are. Laurie also shares an excerpt from her lyric memoir-in-progress.

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Writer-Translator Mara Faye Lethem: Found in Translation

Mara Faye Lethem has received numerous international awards for her translations of contemporary Catalan authors, including the inaugural 2022 Spain-USA Foundation Translation Award for Max Besora’s The Adventures and Misadventures of Joan Orpí and the 2022 Joan Baptiste Cendrós International Prize for her contributions to Catalan literature. Her translation of Irene Solà’s When I Sing, Mountains Dance was shortlisted for the 2022 National Book Critics Circle Barrios Book in Translation Prize, and is currently longlisted for the 2023 Oxford-Weidenfeld Prize. In addition to many novels, she has translated shorter works that have appeared in The GuardianBest American Non-Required Reading 2010GrantaThe Paris ReviewTin HouseA Public Space, McSweeney’s and more. She’s also the author of the novel, A Person’s A Person, No Matter How Small. In this conversation, she discusses with Tanya how became a literary translator, the different ways people approach the task, the particular challenges of the translator’s job and the lessons they hold for all creative endeavors.

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Actor Kelly AuCoin: Ferocious Listening

Kelly AuCoin is best known for playing cult favorite “Dollar Bill” Stearn on Showtime’s Billions and Pastor Tim (known to fans as Pastor Groovyhair) on FX’s iconic drama The Americans. Last year he starred in Hulu’s The Girl from Plainville and AppleTV+’s WeCrashed and is currently filming the FX limited series The Sterling Affairs. He has a host of other television, film and theater credits, including playing Octavius Caesar in Julius Caesar on Broadway opposite Denzel Washington. In this episode, Kelly talks with Tanya about his process of developing a character, his “tortoise-like” career path, the intersection between art and activism, what it’s like to work with Denzel Washington (“He’s got gravitational pull”) and the moments that truly thrill him as an actor.

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Author-Columnist-Political Commentator Steve Phillips: How We Win the Civil War

Steve Phillips suspected there would be no “red wave” in November. One of the most astute political thinkers of our time, he showed us, in his book Brown is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Created a New American Majority, that people of color in combination with progressive whites comprise the majority in this country, a majority that put a Black president in the White House twice. In his new book, How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy Forever, he sheds light on the forces that seek to undermine our democracy, drawing a straight line from the Confederacy to Donald Trump, and illuminates the path forward by highlighting the organizations and individuals whose sustained efforts have transformed the political landscape in Georgia, Arizona, and beyond. In this conversation, Steve shares his core motivation for writing this book, which he describes as a culmination of his life’s work up to this point. We also discuss his writing routine, the surprises he uncovered in his research, and the examples, past and present, that inspire him to continue the fight.

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