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.

WritingTanya ShafferOctober 1, 2023writing, poetry, creativity, women writers, writersComment

Poet-Playwright-Essayist Alison Luterman: Where My Hope Is

Alison Luterman is a writer of extraordinary passion, power, courage and depth. Her work is both timely and timeless, engaging with contemporary issues in profound and complex ways while simultaneously probing the fundamental question of what it means to be human. In this conversation, we talked about her childhood—she started writing poetry when she was six!—her writing process, her recent poetry collection In the Time of Great Fires, her song cycle We Are Not Afraid of the Dark (with composer Sheela Ramesh—song excerpts included!), and the young activists who inspire her. She also reads her stunning poems “Some Girls” (selected by Naomi Shihab Nye for the New York Times Sunday Magazine) and “Insatiable.”

Poet Athena Kashyap: Where A Poem Lives

Athena Kashyap is the author of two exquisite books of poetry, Crossing Black Waters and Sita’s Choice. In this episode, host Tanya Shaffer talks with her about her writing process and they mysteries of courting the muse. They also discuss some of the themes Athena explores in her books, including the immigrant experience, the push and pull between freedom and responsibility, and women’s particular suffering, desires, and joys, in India and beyond. She also reads three of her gorgeous poems, including the one the episode is named for!

Off-Leash Writing