ROLL CALL: GUESTS, EXPERTS, & STORYTELLERS
Maile Spencer Napolean
Maile Spencer Napolean (Aunty Maile) is a 13th generation Hawai’ian from the Big Island, Hawai’i. She joins us from her Mainland travels. Maile taught Hawai’ian studies, served as a nurse, and performs wedding ceremonies. This Hawai’ian master teaches and practices many arts and skills, including lomilomi. We talk story on how not to give half-assed hugs, the lessons of nature, how to flee our mothers’ slippahs, and the history of her gone village.
Come, hear a story across centuries of aloha.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
Bonus episodes: 700 Years of Nature Lessons | I Will Teach You All I Know | Bringing Back Hula - The Merrie Monarch
Scott Fisher
Dr. Scott Fisher is the Chief Conservation Officer at the Hawaiian Islands Land Trust. Growing up on Maui, he joined the U.S. Marine Corps at age 17. He later focused his graduate work on peace studies, with a concentration in native Hawaiian strategies of peacemaking and reconciliation, and the dynamics of post-conflict recovery in a civil war on the island of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea. He explored how communities make wise decisions about conflicts over natural resources and continues that work today.
Hear how the world’s past and climate future intersect off coastal dunes in the North Pacific.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
Bonus episodes: Aloha ‘aina (love of the land) | Ready When the Waters Rise? Climate Change Resiliency from the Hawai’ian Islands | The Land Bears The Brunt - Moving Through Wars | Visiting Hawai’i? An Invitation
Meet the pono folks Off the Hana Highway
Read the 18 stories of unsung goodness on Maui here. This is Maui.
Gavin Conner
Gavin Conner joins us from the mountain valley of Asheville, North Carolina. This talented singer-songwriter is also the co-creator and host of the one of a kind, all Cure podcast, The Holy Hour. We talk grief and creativity moving us through. You don't want to miss the music—or what family, songs, appreciation, Disintegration, and time travel can do.
Whatever your journey through, take a listen.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more on “Good Grief!”
photo by Katelyn Avots
Bonus episodes: The Cure - Good Music, Good Grief | Creativity Moving Us
Niyah White
Niyah White works as a state-level criminal justice policy analyst and decarceration researcher. Her work focuses on comparative policy and community-sourced research promoting alternatives to incarceration and the shrinkage of the carceral system in Mississippi and other top-incarcerating states. Prior to her engagement in justice reform advocacy, Niyah served as a legislative assistant in the Senate of Virginia and as a community organizer in Richmond, Virginia. She holds a Bachelors of Science from Virginia Commonwealth University and currently lives in Northern Virginia.
She breaks down our perceptions vs. realities of crime and punishment in the U.S.—a country with the highest incarceration rate on the planet.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
Mir Tamim Ansary
Tamim Ansary joins us from San Francisco. Born in Afghanistan, he moved to America at age 16. His books include West of Kabul, East of New York, which was San Francisco’s “One City One Book” selection for 2008; Destiny Disrupted, A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes, which won the Northern California Book Award for Nonfiction; and Road Trips, a memoir on arriving in America in the sixties and dropping out of a society he wasn’t part of in the first place. The Invention of Yesterday, to be released by Public Affairs in fall 2019, explores how humans became interconnected over the course of the last 50,000 years—and why we’re still fighting.
Hear how road trips and story created this American — and the stages we all travel in this life.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
Bonus Episode: The Miracle is the Community
Ernest Perry
Ernest Perry, Jr. is the Senior Advisor for Culture, Engagement and Inclusion at OhioHealth. His experience in diversity, equity, and inclusion spans several industries. He currently leads change efforts that cultivate a culture of healthcare equity across physician groups, patient experience and access to care, and organizational learning. A Certified Internal Leadership Coach trained by the Hudson Institute of Coaching and a Certified Internal Diversity and Inclusion Coach trained by the Mind Gym, Ernest joins our Navigating Ill conversation on health equity.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more on “Health Equity”
Chelsey Engel
Chelsey Engel is a writer and labor activist living and working in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She earned her BA in photojournalism just down the street from the United Steelworkers union, who she's been working for in communications since 2012. She self-published her first novel, A Summer of Fever and Freedom, in 2019 and has written on chronic pain and illness and mental health issues on The Mighty.
Chelsey joins our 2020 series on uses—and abuses—of power in public and private spaces and the inaugural episode of Navigating Ill.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more on “Uniting for Power”
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more on “Chronic Illness and Chronic Injury: Ehlers Danlos” and pause for this COVID19 PSA
Clarisse Baleja Saïdi
Award-winning writer Clarisse Baleja Saïdi joins us from an artist residency in Memphis. She has received recognition for her fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and drama. Baleja is the recipient of fellowships and grant support from The Macdowell Colony, Hedgebrook, LaNapoule Foundation, Crosstown Arts, and more. She earned her MFA from the University of Michigan’s Helen Zell Writers’ Program and is at work on her first novel.
We talk about her work not to be free but to recognize she already is free; her quest to observe this world; and the truth in adjectives.
Listen in to how a writer claims their path.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more on “Here to Write”
photo by Jairo Alvarez
Dan Keane
Dan Keane is a writer and teacher in Shanghai. His work has appeared in Harper's, Zoetrope, McSweeney's and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. He was formerly The Associated Press correspondent in Bolivia, and covered the US-Mexico border for The Big Bend Sentinel. He is writing a poem about jet lag, and also a novel.
We talk about the power and uses of narrative to get to the story and liberating ourselves from the idea of the Great American Novel.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
Amanda Leduc
Amanda Leduc is the author of the non-fiction book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space (Coach House Books, 2020) and the novel The Miracles of Ordinary Men (ECW Press, 2013). Her new novel, The Centaur’s Wife, is forthcoming from Random House Canada in February 2021. Her essays and stories have appeared in publications across Canada, the US, and the UK. She has a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. She has cerebral palsy and lives in Hamilton, Ontario, where she works as the Communications Coordinator for the Festival of Literary Diversity (FOLD), Canada's first festival for diverse authors and stories.
Join our conversation on storytelling and disability and why we need to start asking ourselves a different question.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
TRANSCRIPT AVAILABLE HERE
This activity was supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency, and the National Arts and Disability Center at the University of California Los Angeles. Any findings, opinions, or conclusions contained herein are not necessarily those of the California Arts Council, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Arts and Disability Center.
Suman Mallick
Suman Mallick makes his home in Texas with his beloved daughter and dog. His homes away from home are Calcutta, India, and Portland, Oregon. Suman's debut novel “The Black-Marketer’s Daughter” was shortlisted for the Disquiet Open Borders Book Prize, praised as a “complicated and compelling story” of our times and will be released in October 2020 by Atmosphere Press. He received his Master of Fine Arts from Portland State University, where he also taught in the English and Creative Writing departments.
This writer/investment banker talks about acting in good faith, finding one’s own way to breathe and be, and love that defies expectations.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
Bonus episode: The Gap Between What Happens to Us & How We Respond (in Love and Everything Else)
Malia Bohlin
Maui author Malia Bohlin writes novels crossing oceans and time. Born in Oahu and raised on Maui, she studied journalism, mass communication, and non-profit management in Colorado and works in fundraising. Malia is a PATH International certified instructor in a therapeutic horseback riding program. Left at Hiva Oa is her first novel.
Listen as we talk about adventure genes, blind dates, and choosing to create rather than consume.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
Bonus Episodes: 1/3 Research, 1/3 Creativity, 1/3 I Don’t Know (a.k.a. Writing the Book) | 1667 Words a Day or Bust | Bagpipes, Missionaries, & Monarchies - The Hawai’i-Scotland Connection
photo by Lisa Villiarimo
Sandra Razieli
Sandra Razieli joins us from the slopes of Haleakala. As a movement educator, Sandra approaches movement from a neurobiomechanical model that is shaped by years of teaching yoga-based practices as well as her work as a cultural anthropologist, teen educator, and Jewish spiritual leader. She shares how illness and movement changed her life—and the joys of finding humanity, starting from the very bodies we inhabit.
Listen to our episode on movement, connection, and pleasure as our birthright.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more
Bonus episodes: Kiss My Asana | Flipping THE Origin Story: Rethinking Adam & Eve | Moving through Invisible Illness: When You’re a Canary in the Coal Mine | What if it’s Cold (or Hot) Outside? When You DON’T Want to Move Your Body - Weathering the Weather
Josh Lepawsky
Dr. Josh Lepawsky joins us from St John's off the Atlantic. Author of Reassembling Rubbish: Worlding Electronic Waste, Josh's recent Medium piece "Our Tech Addiction is Creating a 'Toxic Soup'" tells how the "world in our pocket"--our phones--have a migration story of their own.
With a more profound environmental impact than we can imagine.
Listen in to what the "cloud" is leaving behind.
iTunes | Spotify | Transistor.fm for more on “Is Cyberspace Biodegradable?”
Bonus Episodes: Fix Your Tech, Save the Planet: Moving to Repair | We Acknowledge - Reconciling How We Got Here, Acknowledging Indigenous Populations
N.T. Arévalo
A celebrated and award-winning teacher, social scientist, and leader, Nancy writes and has advised projects, organizations, and people.
Studying with a range of prolific writers and social policy leaders, she brings best practices to life for novices and pros.
Beloved for her dynamic lessons, engaging style, and commitment to human dignity, she rallies writers to ignite a creative life and change agents to sustain a more just system.
BIO
Nancy's stories have appeared in Shenandoah, Necessary Fiction, The Boiler Journal, Hawai'i Pacific Review, Regarding Arts & Letters, Rose & Thorn Journal, Waterhouse Review, Eunoia Review, Oakland Tribune, San Jose Mercury News, Vitni Review, and Eclectica.
She's completed a novel and two story collections, the most recent set in Bosnia-Herzegovina, including a tale awarded Honorable Mention in the 2014 Bevel Summers Prize Contest. Her story “The Collection” was nominated for a 2020 Pushcart Prize and she is a recipient of support from PEN America, the California Arts Council and National Arts & Disability Center, American Society of Journalists & Authors, and Artist Relief.
She’s attended and received conference scholarships for juried workshops at Bread Loaf, the Community of Writers, Napa Valley Writers, and Tin House, and studied at Aspen Summer Words Readers' Retreats, San Francisco’s Grotto, and Delve Seminars at Portland Literary Arts, where she served as a Scribe. She’s also been a volunteer for Portland Literary Arts, the World Affairs Council, and Live Wire! Radio. Nancy recently served as a literary arts grant panelist for the San Francisco Arts Commission and reader for Boston Review.
She runs two podcasts--one on migration and another on navigating illness through the healthcare system--featuring a diversity of voices and storytellers.
Nancy launched Our Story Studio--a popular series of writing, literature, and storytelling classes—providing needed community education opportunities. She was recently commissioned to write a biweekly human interest column for the Honolulu-Star Advertiser and climate resiliency journalism.
Nancy is a long time civil rights advocate, a former South Texas public school teacher, a former national foundation officer, and a McNair Scholar. She has lived and worked across the United States.
In recent years, Nancy served as an arts administrator for a West Maui NGO and an outreach strategist for a wildlife recovery project out of the University of Hawai’i. She is the recipient of a Koret Innovation Award and an Encorps Community Pioneer Award for her leadership in the Bay Area.
A community college and first generation graduate who studied comparative race and social policy, Nancy also holds a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Read client & student comments here. Send all inquiries here.
SEE A MAP OF HOW WE GOT *HERE*
HAWAi’I STORIES
BEST OF ALOHA SHORTS | TALK STORY RADIO | HAWAI’I ISLAND SPEAKS OUT (HISO) | THE STORY OF PELE | WHY MAUI SNARED THE SUN | HAWAI’I’s LAST QUEEN
OTHER PODCASTS ON THE MIGRANT STORY
"There is something that emerges when we confront what it means to be here. If we are tuned in, with enough precision, we might emerge with something that can help us and that can help other people." - Teju Cole
MAEVE IN AMERICA: IMMIGRATION IRL “With all this talk about wall building, bad hombres and refugees as Skittles, comedian Maeve Higgins is beyond ready to change the conversation around immigration. She's traveled all the way here from Ireland to bring you funny, beautiful and sometimes maddening immigration stories, told by the people who’ve lived them.”
MIGRATION NATION “American migration is different. Even today, Americans move more than people in almost any other country on earth. Our goal is simple: help us all follow our national “Origin Trail,” and see how we became the nation we are today.”
IMMIGRATION NATION “Host Kara Lynum tackles myths and misconceptions about immigrants and provides listeners with the reality of immigration policy in the United States.”
THE ALIEN CHRONICLES “Every week, the podcast invites people who are unique in their own right, global citizens of sorts. People who have come to call America home, despite where they are from, who carry the legacy of their ancestors while being as American as can be. Guests talk food, fashion, politics etc. in the context of different cultures and ethnicities. Our goal is to create empathy for “the other” through relatable narratives.”
IMMIGRANT LIFE: THE CANADIAN NARRATIVE “The act of immigrating to Canada is simple but the reality of integration after arrival is a complex experience. Unfortunately, you can’t really grasp what I am talking about unless you are also a first generation Canadian immigrant. This is why we are in the best position to share our own stories — what worked, what didn’t work, what we could have done better and what it cost us.”
MIGRATION POLICY INSTITUTE PODCAST “MPI is a nonprofit, nonpartisan think tank dedicated to the study of the movement of people worldwide.”
RADIO AMBULANTE “Radio Ambulante is a Spanish-language podcast, distributed by NPR, that tells Latin American stories from anywhere Spanish is spoken, including the United States. We work with a talented community of storytellers and radio producers from different corners of the continent, while taking advantage of technology to produce, distribute and exchange stories.”
Off the Hana Highway