Minibabble: Creativity in Difficult Times
When writer and artist Patrice Vecchione found herself crippled by anxiety and despair in early 2025, she responded the only way a creative person can: she wrote. In this mini-episode,….
Podcast: The Babblery
The Babblery features conversations about who we are and how we got this way. Modern humans can seem like the ancients building the Biblical Tower of Babel, cursed by God/nature never to understand each other. As Visiting Translators at the Tower of Babble, our guests delve into their work, their research, and their own experiences to try to explain the bits they’ve learned about Earth’s most perplexing species. Though we all speak different languages, here at The Babblery we aim to promote understanding, one conversation at a time.
Holding the Inner Flame: On Creativity
What is creativity, how can we nurture it, and what can it do for us? In this conversation we speak about creativity from two directions: Dr. Joanne Foster researches and writes about creativity in education, and Patrice Vecchione teaches and practices creativity in her writing and visual art. Interviewed separately, Joanne and Patrice speak on the same topics through the lens each has developed in her own life and work.
Minibabble: My battle gear tells you I’m Generation X
Reflections by Babblery host Suki Wessling about generations in American culture, the hippie ethic, Gen X battle gear, and the value of sowing oneself in the fertile soil of community….
Minibabble: Two sides to every immigration story
Host Suki Wessling of The Babblery interviewed two women with roots in Jamaica. Feminist journalist Dr. Peggy Antrobus worked in the Jamaican government and now lives and works in Barbados. American CEO Sharon Sewell-Fairman is an immigrant from Jamaica. Their perspectives are woven together to form a story of immigration from two sides.
Go ahead and pick those mushrooms
Living gently with nature Some thoughts by Babblery host Suki Wessling on how we have been taught to be almost too respectful of nature. We’ve forgotten how to live hard….
A grandmother’s legacy: Sharon Sewell-Fairman finds her voice
Women Creating Change CEO and President Sharon Sewell-Fairman talks about her path from rural Jamaica to leading a NYC nonprofit that works to increase civic engagement amongst women in New York City.
Minibabble: Dystopian novels – Warning, not blueprint.
Some thoughts from Babblery host Suki Wessling about how we should read and act upon dystopian literature. It seems that reasonable people take these novels as warnings, many people seem to take them as blueprints for how we should mold our future.
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.
Writing into the Future of Kidlit with Carol Fisher Saller
Carol Fisher Saller moved from her career as an editor to a writer of children’s books not knowing that she was witnessing the end of an era. Her first books were published by traditional, mainstream publishers who were running their businesses the way they had been run for decades. Then Carol, along with many other writers, saw the industry change around her. Now Carol is an indie publisher, trying to find new ways to bring her stories to the children who will be her readers.
Minibabble: Feeling Guilty about Feeling Good
We need to feel good in order to have the energy and will to solve our problems. We need to feel bad in order to recognize problems and act on….