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What happens when Mexico's future president lands in New Orleans, a city of operas, slave markets, and radical musical invention? A man who spoke a variant of Zapotec and read the French philosophers of the Enlightenment finds himself adrift in the hallucinatory swamps of New Orleans.
In this episode of Speaking Out of Place podcast, Professor David Palumbo-Liu speaks with novelist, essayist, and scholar Yuri Herrera about his new novel, Season of the Swamp, which is a deeply researched and dazzlingly imagined account of Benito Juarez’s time spent in exile in New Orleans. We learn about what that time and place offered to Juarez’s understanding of a world coming into being—one of créolité and carnival, of mixedness and multiplicity, and what these sometimes hallucinatory moments offered his political vision. They talk about what kinds of new visions of freedom are discovered in the midst of forms of slavery that horrify Juarez. We hear how all of this relates to the present day—to the genocide in Gaza, the violent ICE attacks in the United States, and the descent into unbridled, and unmasked fascism.
Yuri Herrera's first three novels have been translated into several languages: Kingdom Cons, Signs Preceding the End of the World, and Transmigration of Bodies. In 2016 he shared with translator Lisa Dillman the Best translated Book Award for the translation of Signs Preceding the End of the World. That same year he received the Anna Seghers Prize at the Academy of Arts of Berlin, for the body of his work. His latest books are A Silent Fury: The El Bordo Mine Fire, Ten Planets, and Season of the Swamp. He is a professor of creative writing and literature at Tulane University, in New Orleans.
(0:00) The Season of the Swamp
(3:55) Benito Juarez’s Life, his indigenous roots and his conflict with dictator Santana.
(7:00) Yuri Herrera's relationship with New Orleans and the theme of extreme migration.
(11:00) An Accidental Avant-Garde How the clash of European classical music and African drumming in Congo Square created a new space for imagination.
(15:30) Individual Freedom vs. Slavery
(19:30) Ocampo the Socialist Vampire Slayer Symbolic dreams in the novel and the rebellious resilience of New Orleans.
(24:10) The Art of Translation
(27:25) Reading from the novel
(33:30) Democratizing the Gaze Why the author chose not to use Juarez's name in order to strip away the monument and reveal the tender, perceptive migrant.
(39:30) Modern Fascism and Cruelty Connecting history to the ICE attacks and global resistance.
(45:00) The Last Gringo Reflecting on a short story about language, power and the changing face of America.
www.palumbo-liu.com
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@speaking_out_of_place

Today, on International Women's Day, we hear from writers, artists, filmmakers and activists who have used their work to question old hierarchies and give expression to the fullness of women’s experiences.
(0:00) Manuela Lucà-Dazio  (Exec. Director, Pritzker Architecture Prize · Fmr. Exec. Director, Dept. of Visual Arts & Architecture · Venice Biennale) on Analyzing and Acting
(2:01) Siri Hustvedt (Novelist, Scholar, Memoirist · Author of ‘Ghost Stories’ and ‘What I Loved’) on Listening and the Essence of Dialogue
(3:35) Hala Alyan (Psychologist, Author of I'll Tell You When I'm Home)
(5:11) Ana Castillo (Novelist & Poet) On Xicanisma and Indigenous History
(6:55) Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy (Academy Award-winning Filmmaker) Film As A Tool For Change
(8:37) Sara Ahmed (Scholar) On The Feminist Killjoy
(10:40) Marilyn Minter (Artist) on Owning Sexual Agency
(11:23) Ellen Rapoport (Showrunner, Writer, HBO’s Minx) on Feminism and Sexual Expression
(12:07) Intan Paramaditha (Author) on Tiger Mothers, Monsters and So-called Bad Women
(15:07) Ada Limón (24th U.S. Poet Laureate) Motherhood, Grief And Poetry
(18:11) Ami Vitale (Photographer & Filmmaker) How Being a Woman Gave Her Access to Different Stories
To hear more from each guest, listen to their full interviews.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
@creativeprocesspodcast

"The thing that puzzled him was why people don't agree to be fully expressed while they're alive. Why does it only happen in their last moment? Why wouldn't you live being fully expressed?"
My guest today is AL Kennedy. She is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-winning novel Day, as easily as she can navigate the "professional lying" of a modern civil servant.
Her latest novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, takes place during the 2020 lockdown. It tells the story of a primary school teacher who receives a confession from an undercover police officer who infiltrated her life decades earlier. It’s a provocative investigation into state power, the "Spy Cops" scandal and the search for mercy in an age of surveillance. It’s a book about the breakdown of trust. We talk about her life, her activism, and why she believes fiction is the only way to tell the truth when the facts are forbidden and how she balances the truth of her novels with the relief of stand-up comedy.
(0:00) Finding Your Voice
On the Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed
(2:30) Reading from Alive in the Merciful Country
Kennedy shares a passage from her latest novel, exploring hope and resilience in dark times.
(4:43) The Myth of Shrinking Attention Spans
Challenging the narrative that modern audiences cannot focus, and the importance of engaging storytelling.
(6:22) Education and the Foundation of Democracy
The dangers of dismantling education and how critical thinking protects us from fascism.
(10:26) The Spy Cop Scandal and State Surveillance
Unpacking the reality of undercover police infiltrating peaceful protests and intimate lives.
(13:59) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy
The fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.
(17:34) Writing Without Theft: The Ethics of Character Creation
Kennedy explains her imaginative process and why she refuses to steal details from real people's lives.
(28:16) AI, Digital Slop, and the Loss of Trust
Reflections on artificial intelligence as an unstable plagiarism machine and its impact on truth.
(30:03) Nature, Spirituality, and the Merciful Country
Finding healing in the natural world and navigating the future with love and awareness.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast

What happens when the state infiltrates your most intimate relationships? How do we protect the innocence and imagination of children in an increasingly authoritarian world? "If you have love, eventually you're going to win. It's not that people aren't going to die. It's not terrible things aren't going to happen. But if you stay with that and you stay centered in that, you'll get through and you will not have turned into a monster in order to overcome monsters.”
My guest today is AL Kennedy. She is one of Britain’s most acclaimed and versatile literary voices, a writer who can inhabit the internal life of a soldier in a POW camp, as she did in her Costa Book Award-winning novel Day, as easily as she can navigate the "professional lying" of a modern civil servant.
Her latest novel, Alive in the Merciful Country, takes place during the 2020 lockdown. It tells the story of a primary school teacher who receives a confession from an undercover police officer who infiltrated her life decades earlier. It’s a provocative investigation into state power, the "Spy Cops" scandal and the search for mercy in an age of surveillance. It’s a book about the breakdown of trust. We talk about her life, her activism, and why she believes fiction is the only way to tell the truth when the facts are forbidden and how she balances the truth of her novels with the relief of stand-up comedy.
(0:00) Finding Your Voice On the Alfred Wolfsohn voice method and the power of being fully expressed
(2:17) Education and the Foundation of Democracy The dangers of dismantling education and how critical thinking protects us from fascism.
(5:14) The Myth of Shrinking Attention Spans Challenging the narrative that modern audiences cannot focus, and the importance of engaging storytelling.
(8:23) Reading from Alive in the Merciful Country Kennedy shares a passage from her latest novel, exploring hope and resilience in dark times.
(17:45) The Spy Cop Scandal and State Surveillance Unpacking the reality of undercover police infiltrating peaceful protests and intimate lives.
(22:07) AI, Digital Slop, and the Loss of Trust Reflections on artificial intelligence as an unstable plagiarism machine and its impact on truth.
(28:29) The Power of the Powerless: Radical Whimsy How absurdity, humor, and inflatable costumes can disrupt authoritarian mindsets and potential violence.
(33:13) Lockdown: A Global Pause and the Inrush of Empathy The fleeting moment of unified humanity during the pandemic and how it was ultimately betrayed.
(42:53) Writing Without Theft: The Ethics of Character Creation Kennedy explains her imaginative process and why she refuses to steal details from real people's lives.
(1:29:40) Nature, Spirituality, and the Merciful Country Finding healing in the natural world and navigating the future with love and awareness.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
IG @creativeprocesspodcast

“Grief is a particular kind of unrequited love. It wasn't unrequited in the past. Usually, we think of unrequited love as you never got to do it, you never had it for yourself. But, in fact, there can be requited love, which is then unrequited love in the paroxysms of grief.”
Today, we are honored to welcome a writer whose work has long explored the intimate landscapes of the mind, memory and the heart. Siri Hustvedt’s writing moves between the personal and the philosophical, the literary and the deeply human. Her work bridges collections of essays, non-fiction, poetry, and seven novels, including the international bestsellers What I Loved and The Summer Without Men. Recipient of the Princess of Asturias Award for Literature and the Gabarron Prize for Thought, her work has been translated into over thirty languages. Her new memoir, Ghost Stories, is a reflection on forty-three years shared with her late husband, the writer and filmmaker Paul Auster. In its pages, we encounter not only love and loss, but the quiet persistence of presence, memory, and language itself.
(0:00) “We were hugely important to the drama of becoming in our own lives”
(2:04) Grief as Unrequited Love
Siri explores the emotional reality of living without Paul Auster, noting that grief occurs because love does not stop when a person dies.
(3:19) The Shared Space of a 43-year Marriage
(4:36) Reading from Ghost Stories
Siri reads the opening passage of her memoir, detailing how the loss of her husband deranged her sense of time and bodily rhythms.
(7:02) How Loss Changes Our Sense of Time
(11:24)  How Powerful Emotions and a Person's Life Can Play a Role in Illness
(13:04) Believing in a Reality that Transcends the Individual
(20:06) Physical Love in Marriage
On the importance of physical intimacy in long-term marriages, a reality often left out of grief memoirs.
Episode Website
www.creativeprocess.info/pod
Instagram:@creativeprocesspodcast