Episodes 006 & 007 "My Original Sin" and "My Father Often Told Me if I Didn't Learn Spanish He'd Disown Me" by Gabriela Lemmons

Gabriela Lemmons is a poet and a non-fiction writer. She is also a founding member of the Latino Writers Collective of Kansas City. Her work has appeared in the Kansas City Hispanic News, Present Magazine and the anthologies Just Like a Girl: A Menifesta! (Girlchild Press, 2008), Primera Pagina: Poetry from the Latino Heartland (Scapegoat Press, 2009) and Cuentos: Stories from the Latino Heartland (Scapegoat Press, 2009). She was also televised as the feature poet on the PBS show Uniquely Kansas City. Episodes six and seven are recordings of Gabriela reading her poems "My Original Sin" and "My Father Often Told Me if I Didn't Learn Spanish He'd Disown Me."

Episode 005 "If I Say" by Mary Stone Dockery

Mary Stone Dockery is a poet living in Lawrence, KS. She is also a current MFA student at the University of Kansas. Her work has appeared, or is forthcoming in Touchstone, FuturCycle poetry and the Pennsylvania Literary Review. Mary was also a reader for The Blue Island Review, an anthology of poetry from Lawrence, KS area writers. The fifth episode of the podcast is a recording of Mary reading her poem "If I Say."

Episode 3 and Episode 4: Mark Hennessy reads two poems

Mark Hennessy is a poet and former front man for the A&M band PAW who lives in Lawrence, KS. He is currently a student in the creative writing PhD program at the University of Kansas. He has two books of poetry out; Cue the Bedlam, and most recently, I Lost it All the Night the Day the Circus Came to Town. The third and fourth episodes of the podcast are recordings of Mark reading his poems "Frankenstein and the Late Frankenstein in the Sea" and "Frankenstein's Monster on Ice: Nothing in Intellect Unless First in Sense."

Episode 002 "Tennessee Flood" by Mark Petterson

Episode two is a recording of the poem "Tennessee Flood" by Mark Petterson. Mark is a poet and fiction writer who lives in Lawrence, KS. He is a current student of the University of Kansas MFA program and a former Jeopardy contestant.

Some changes after a long hiatus, and Episode 001

I'm finally going to return to updating Kansas Blotter Audio more regularly. I have a large collection of short audio files in the wings and will be adding new audio files much more frequently. I've also found a new place for podcast hosting. If you'd like to subscribe to the Kansas Blotter podcasts through Itunes, or another service, feel free to do so by following this link. If you were subscribed to the old podcast through Itunes, you'll want to resubscribe. To kick things off, I've uploaded a brief excerpt of poet Kenneth Irby reading from the introduction to Swann's Way by Marcel Proust, taken from an extended, recorded conversation Kyle Waugh, poet Cyrus Console and I had with Ken last year. Enjoy! Ken has such a great reading voice.

DaMaris B. Hill interview: 11-18-2009

I interviewed DaMaris B. Hill on Wednesday, November 18th, 2009, in Lawrence, KS. DaMaris is a doctoral student in the English Creative Writing program at the University of Kansas. She is a member of the National Writing Project and a graduate of Morgan State University with an M.A. degree in English. Her story "On the Other Side of Heaven-1957" won the 2003 Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award for Short Fiction. She is currently writing a novel about female juvenile delinquents during the Great Depression. She is also working on a chap book of her poetry. Some of her past writing has been published in the Bermuda Anthology of Poetry, the African American National Biography Project, Warpland, Mourning Katrina: A Poetic Response to Tragedy, Women in Judaism, and The Sable Quill. DaMaris was recently featured on The Black Bottom, a blog dedicated to the critical discussion of African American politics and culture in Michigan, the Great Lakes region, and the United States as a whole. She served as the co-coordinator of the 2008 NWP Professional Writing Retreat anthology. Currently, she serves as the Collections Specialist for the Project on the History of Black Writing at the University of Kansas.

You can listen to DaMaris' interview as a podcast, or download the MP3 of the interview at this link.

Also, if you would like, you can now subscribe to the Kansas Blotter Interviews podcasts with Itunes.

David McLoghlin interview: 11/10/2009

I interviewed David McLoghlin on November 10th, 2009, in Lawrence, KS. David was born in Dublin, Ireland, and has lived in Belgium, the U.S., France, Spain, and in West Kerry, Ireland. He is currently living in Lawrence, KS. David has received a number of awards for his writing, including second prize in the 2009 Patrick Kavanagh Awards, first prize in the English section of the inaugural Frances Brown Multilingual Poetry Competition, and selection by Poetry Ireland to participate in their annual Introductions reading series for emerging poets. In 2006 he was awarded a major Arts Council of Ireland Bursary for his memoir, The Traveled Child, which describes his family's emigration to Brussels and Connecticut, during the early 1980's. In April 2007 he received a grant from Kerry County Council that allowed him to spend several weeks at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Ireland's best-known artists' retreat. His writing has appeared in journals such as Poetry Ireland Review, The Stinging Fly, Southword, Cyphers, The Stony Thursday Book, Studies, Blue Canary Press, Milwaukee (edited by James Liddy), and The Irish Catholic newspaper. Most recently, six of David's poems were published by The Stinging Fly, after he was chosen as the Featured Poet for their Winter 2009-10 issue. I interviewed David in the bowels of the Watson Library on the University of Kansas campus, surrounded by tomes and outcroppings of piping and machinery.

(The MP3 of the interview is available to download to your computer, or Ipod/MP3 player HERE.)