Musings of the Artist: (Honest) Conversations with Montse Andrée

Matthew Zapruder is a poet, editor, and teacher. He is the author of six collections of poetry, most recently I Love Hearing Your Dreams (Scribner 2024), as well as two books of prose: Why Poetry (Ecco, 2017) and Story of a Poem (Unnamed, 2023). He is editor at large at Wave Books, and from 2016-7 he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the Poetry Column for the New York Times Magazine, and was the Editor of Best Americ...

Amina Cain is Los Angeles based writer. She is the author of the novel Indelicacy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2020), and two collections of short stories, Creature (Dorothy, 2013) and I Go To Some Hollow (Les Figues Press, 2009). Her latest book is A Horse at Night: On Writing (Dorothy, 2022).

In this conversation we discuss friendship, writing, class, ambivalence around motherhood (an article she wrote on this can be found here), emb...

Sue William Silverman is an award-winning author of eight works of nonfiction and poetry and  her most recent book is Acetylene Torch Songs: Writing True Stories to Ignite the Soul. This conversation, just like her book, is centered around writing personal narratives. We discuss putting our most vulnerable selves on the page, the fluidity of memory, writing about other people and much more. If you are a writer of memoir and persona...

Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding, and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays—The Book of Delights (a New York Times bestseller), Inciting Joy, and his newest collection, The Book of (More) Delights.

This conversation, much like Ross’s work, is about joy, curiosity, belonging and caring for one another....

Gregory Orr is a poet who is known to be a master of the short, personal lyric. About Gregory, Mary Oliver wrote “He speaks now, in these many short poems, which in their entirety are really one long poem, of mysteries, of those things –emotions, situations, mind and heart states–which are beyond the definitive.” 

Gregory is the author of more than 10 collections of poetry. He has also published a beautiful book about lyric poetry c...

Philip Metres is a poet, translator and director of the Peace, Justice and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He is the author of ten books, including Shrapnel Maps, The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance, Pictures at an Exhibition, and Sand Opera.

Tomás Q. Morin is a poet, translator, and editor. His books include the collection of poems Machete and the memoir Let Me Count the Ways, as well as the poe...

Laura Warrell is a writer based in Los Angeles. "Sweet, Soft, Plenty Rhythm" is her first novel. The story follows a 40-year-old jazz musician and womanizer Circus Palmer–but this book centers the women in his life. It is a telling of their stories, not only his.

Laura and I talk about her wonderful debut and her path to publication which is an inspiring tale of persistence. And, from a bit of a different angle, we muse on that pere...

Ama Codjoe is a poet based in New York City. She is the author of Bluest Nude and Blood of the Air. Her poems and essays have been published in many outlets and her work has twice appeared in The Best American Poetry. Her poems often engage with visual art—especially art by Black women artists. 

This conversation is much about the body. On how we relate to nudity and nakedness, on being in the body as an artist and on living a fully...

Diana Khoi Nguyen is a poet and multimedia artist. She is the author of the poetry collection, Ghost Of (Omnidawn Publishing, 2018) which was a finalist for the National Book Award and L.A. Times Book Prize. In this episode we talk about grief, complex emotions, silence, and breaking that silence through art. 

Note: There is a bit of static in the beginning on my end that I wasn’t aware of while recording - but it gets better!

This e...

Ingrid Rojas Contreras is a writer who was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia and now lives in San Francisco, California. Her first book was the novel Fruit of the Drunken Tree and her most recent book is a family memoir called The Man Who Could Move Clouds.

In this episode we chat all about language. On writing between two languages and cultures, and the evolution of language. We also talk about anxiety, dreams (what they can tell...

Elinor Carucci is an Israeli-American Fine Art Photographer based in New York City. Her photographs are included in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art New York, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, Houston Museum of Fine Art, among others. Her work has been published in The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, W, Aperture, and many other publications. She has published four monographs: Closer, Diary of a Dancer, MOTHER and Midl...

Victoria Chang is a poet, writer and editor. Her new book of poetry is The Trees Witness Everything (2022). Her other books include Dear Memory: Letters on Writing, Silence and Grief (2021) and OBIT (2020).

In this episode, we chat about collaboration in art, her wonderful and varied use of form in her writing, and her current role as poetry editor at The New York Times Magazine. 

We also talk about growing up between cultures, and t...

Melissa Febos is the author of the critically acclaimed memoir, Whip Smart, and the essay collections, Abandon Me and Girlhood. Her craft book, Body Work: The Radical Power of Personal Narrative, will be published on March 15th.

In this episode, Melissa and I chat about her wonderful book Body Work. We talk about writing as a spiritual practice (and mode of discovery), learning to quiet that pesky voice saying “who cares?” while mak...

David Hilliard is a fine art photographer based in Boston. He received his BFA from Massachusetts College of Art, and his MFA from Yale University. Through the use of diptychs and triptychs, his beautiful work documents his life and the lives of those around him. 

In this episode, David talks about his life in photography and how his love of theater, film, and storytelling influence the images he makes. We also chat about the perks ...

Fernando A. Flores is a writer based in Austin, TX. His books include the collection Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, the novel Tears of the Trufflepig, and his upcoming book is Valleyesque.

In this episode, Fernando and I talked all about the ups and downs of the creative life, on living between cultures, the difference between writing vs. publishing, and the question Fernando asks that I’d like to put on a t-shirt: “I...

Michael Kleber-Diggs is a poet, essayist, and literary critic. His debut poetry collection Worldly Things was published last year and he is also a contributor to the book There’s a Revolution Outside, My Love: Letters from a Crisis. Michael teaches creative writing through the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop and at colleges and high schools in Minnesota.

In this conversation, Michael and I discuss his writing story, hope and sorro...

Janelle Lynch is a New York-based artist whose images reveal an inquiry into themes of connection, presence, and transcendence.

She uses an 8x10-inch view camera, and her recent work is deeply informed by her training in perceptual drawing and painting.

Janelle’s photographs are in many private and public collections, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the International Center of Photography, New York; and the Victor...

Daisy Hernández is a writer and cultural activist. She is the author of the award-winning memoir "A Cup of Water Under My Bed" and coeditor of "Colonize This! Young Women of Color on Today's Feminism". Her latest book is "The Kissing Bug: A True Story of an Insect, a Family and a Nation's Neglect of a Deadly Disease". In this episode, we have a wide-ranging conversation about spirituality, writing, the nuances of language and cultu...