In this episode, Gessy Alvarez talks with French writer, poet, and editor Marie Baléo. Marie's chapbook Submersion is the winner of our 2021 Digging Press Chapbook Series Award. The poetry collection articulates dignity, admiration, and a profound kinship for Beirut, Lebanon. Submersion is a subtle love letter exquisitely expressed in lyrical and narrative verse. Marie writes primarily in English, and her poetry, fiction, and nonfiction have appeared in literary magazines in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada. She is one of the Poetry Society's 2020 National Poetry Competition w ..read more

Gessy Alvarez talks to Digging Press author Abigail Carl-Klassen about her chapbook Ain't Country Like You available at DiggingPress.com. About Ain't Country Like You Winner of the 2019 Digging Press Chapbook Series Award, Abigail Carl-Klassen depicts rural spaces inhabited by a community dependent on the boom and bust cycles of oil fields and cash crop agriculture. The personal and confrontational voices in these eighteen poems, embody the constant tension of political rhetoric and social vulnerability in contemporary America. Unapologetically tender and with a hopeful nod to an elusive Ameri ..read more

In today's episode, I’m talking to a dear friend, writer Jenny Shank. Jenny’s short story collection Mixed Company won the George Garrett Fiction Prize and was published by Texas Review Press in November 2021. From JennyShank.com: In Mixed Company Jenny Shank reveals moments of grace and connection between people of her hometown, Denver, through stories that contrast the city during its oil-bust era of economic troubles and court-ordered crosstown busing for racial desegregation with the burgeoning and gentrifying city of recent years. In "Hurts," a girls' basketball team at a majority Black D ..read more

It's the end of 2019 and we feel fine. Listen to Gessy Alvarez read the last story she wrote in 2019. We'll be launching our monthly reading series in the Red Room at KGB Bar, NYC in 2020. Join us for our first reading event on January 14. For details go to DiggingPress.com/reading-series. Happy New Year, all! Opening and Closing Music Credit: Dusk Cathedral by Lee Rosevere RELEASED: April 2nd, 2019 GENRES: Electronic, Ambient, Hip-Hop Beats, Instrumental LENGTH: 00:17:44 LABEL: Happy Puppy Records freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rose…Dusk_Cathedral Interlude: RELEASED: March 20th, 2019 GENRES ..read more

Storyteller Series continues with a witty tale - Gummy Candies Maybe the Fourth State of Matter, But That’s Only After They’ve Been Admitted to the Union by David S. Atkinson. David S. Atkinson is the author of books such as "Roses are Red, Violets are Stealing Loose Change from my Pockets While I Sleep," "Apocalypse All the Time," and the Nebraska book award-winning "Not Quite so Stories." He is a Prose Assistant Editor for "Digging Through The Fat" and his writing appears in "Spelk," "Jellyfish Review," "Thrice Fiction," "Literary Orphans," and more. His writing website is http://davidsatkin ..read more

Gessy Alvarez talks to author Amanda Headlee about her new book, Till We Become Monsters published by Woodhall Press (June 1, 2021). Amanda Headlee's Bio: With a love of scary stories and folklore, Amanda Headlee spent her entire life crafting works of dark fiction. She has a fascination with the emotion of fear and believes it is the first emotion humans feel at the moment they are born. Most of her work focuses on dark fiction associated with folklore and cosmic horror. The fear of humanity’s insignificance in the vastness of the Universe intrigues her. By day Amanda is a Program Manager; by ..read more

Hello, every loving one of you. Welcome to Digging Through with Gessy Alvarez. A podcast celebrating the cultural omnivores in all of us. In this episode, Gessy looks back at Summer 2021. Doesn’t it feel like June was 20 years ago and not two months ago?. Hear her reminisce about those good old Summer 2021 days for a bit…she talks about the Alice Neel retrospective at the Met in NYC, Provincetown post July 4th outbreak, and finally finishing that damn novel. Music Credits: John Sib for Pixabay. "Tropical House ..read more

In this episode Gessy talks with Dimitri Reyes, a Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist, content creator, organizer, and educator from Newark, New Jersey. Dimitri is the winner of the 2020 Digging Press Chapbook Award. His award-winning chapbook, Every First & Fifteenth is forthcoming June 30 2021. You can learn more about Dimitri at dimitrireyespoet.com. He also has a wonderful YouTube channel by that same name so do look for that as well. Music Credits: John Sib for Pixabay. "Tropical House ..read more

We're back from a long hiatus. Gessy talks about what has kept her away for so long, Portland, AWP Conference, and answers the question everyone was asking her...What does 'Cultural Omnivore' mean? Opening and Closing Music Credit: Dusk Cathedral by Lee Rosevere RELEASED: April 2nd, 2019 GENRES: Electronic, Ambient, Hip-Hop Beats, Instrumental LENGTH: 00:17:44 LABEL: Happy Puppy Records http://freemusicarchive.org/music/Lee_Rosevere/Blue_Dot_RMX/Dusk_Cathedral ..read more

Roberto Carlos Garcia reads selected works from his new collection, Elegies (Flower Song Press). He talks about remembrance, life during the pandemic, matriarchy, history, feminism, The Black Jacobins, and the challenges of communicating hope in spite of racism. Poet, storyteller, and essayist Roberto Carlos Garcia is a self-described “sancocho […] of provisions from the Harlem Renaissance, the Spanish Poets of 1929, the Black Arts Movement, the Nuyorican School, and the Modernists.” Garcia is rigorously interrogative of himself and the world around him, conveying “nakedness of emotion, intent ..read more