Category: Arts & Music

Minibabble: Carol Fisher Saller on Inclusivity in Children’s Fiction

In this mini-episode, we focus on a change that has both energized and confused writers: the push for representation and the elimination of cultural appropriation. Author Carol Fisher Saller speaks with refreshing candor about the difficulties she faces as a white writer who genuinely wants to write representative, inclusive kidlit. She talks about the myths and misperceptions, as well as the challenges, as she tries to make her way in a changed industry.

Minibabble: Making music together = moving toward the good

Making music together = keeping time together
We often talk about “spending” time with friends, but how about keeping time? When we make music together, we literally interact with the time that we’re “spending,” keeping it, beat by beat, as a shared resource. There’s really no other [public] activity that we can do with other humans that allows us to interact in this way: when we play music, our bodies move in sync, our mouths say words together or in response, we are literally joined together in time.

Play Like a Girl (or not) with Brenda Laurel

In this conversation with Brenda Laurel, we explore how girls play and what that means for women and game designers. We talk about the relationship between theater and gaming, and how the gaming world grew to change the way children live and develop. We talk about the importance of teaching. But most of all, we talk about what it means to be a creator in this world, someone who asks others to entrust their minds to our work.

Exactly Who We Are: The Portraiture of Jana Marcus

What happens when a photographer, a mature woman herself, welcomes older women into her studio to get the “full glamour treatment”? In this episode, we explore how a session with photographer Jana Marcus inspired and thrilled the women who took part. Even though beauty is supposed to be a superficial attribute, seeing themselves as beautiful, strong, and desirable had a deep and lasting effect on these women.