If season one of our Transposition podcast was about sharing the voices of our contributors at a time when so many venues were silenced, season two was about inviting others in. We added Mitchell Evenson as an associate producer, and he created our new theme music and helped shape the season. We brought on more guests to expand and deepen the context of our content. We interviewed our first visual artist on the podcast, Zoe Walsh. With all of these new additions, we found a common theme.
From Zachary Eller inventing words in his delightfully out-there “Little Planet,” to Viva Padilla leading with the Spanish language in her poetry, to JJ Peña eschewing capitalization, our podcast guests invited us to reexamine the rules of writing and gave us permission to take ownership of our own stories.
We invite you to listen to season two if you haven’t already. And while you’re waiting for season three to roll out this summer, listen to our special mini episode with former Expo intern Leo Smith about how they launched Expo’s first chapbook.
Transposition, Season Two
Episode One
Zachary Eller: Truth, Wonder, and Travel in Experimental Fiction
“Is culture something to be consumed? Because it’s being treated as a consumer product. It’s something that is sold. There’s a price on it.”
Episode Two
Hoarding Words: Fiction with K-Ming Chang
“If you have a feeling of … a lack of control over your own life and a lack of agency over the trajectory of your life, this item in your hands is something that is entirely in your agency.”
Episode Three
The Many Layers of Zoe Walsh: Deconstructing Art, Gender, and Sexuality
“In terms of thinking about spectatorship at the pool, it is interesting to me as a nonbinary trans person because these issues of, like, surface and depth, desire, and embodiment are really loaded … so the photographs felt like a great vehicle.”
Episode Four
Funny and Sad at the Same Time: Neal Adelman on Creating Strong Voices Onstage
“The voice comes first. I hear a character and let them talk and vomit on the page for a while. It all starts for me with aural with an ‘a.’”
Episode Five
Liberation and Translation: Viva Padilla’s Disruptive Poetry
“The Spanish is always the guide, and the English is just trying to keep up with the Spanish poem.”
Episode Six
Fractured Memory: JJ Peña on Trauma and Storytelling with K.B. Carle
“How important it is to carry stories, because what we tell about the world and about ourselves keeps us alive.”
You can subscribe and listen to all episodes of Transposition, including six additional readings from our “Act/Break” launch, on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Anchor.