Dante's New South Radio Show

September 2023 Dante’s Oliver de la Paz is the Poet Laureate of Worcester, MA for 2023-2025. He is the author and editor of seven books: Names Above Houses, Furious Lullaby, Requiem for the Orchard, Post Subject: A Fable, and The Boy in the Labyrinth, a finalist for the Massachusetts Book Award in Poetry. His newest work, The Diaspora Sonnets, is published by Liveright Press (2023) and is longlist...

August 2023 Dante’s Old South 
Jeffrey Dale Lofton  hails from Warm Springs, Georgia, best known as the home of Roosevelt’s Little White House but calls the nation’s capital home now. He is a senior advisor at the Library of Congress, surrounded by books and people who love books—in short, paradise. Red Clay Suzie is his first novel, a fictionalized memoir written through his personal lens growing...

N.A. Windsor is the Program Manager of the UCLA Extension Writers’ Program and the Co-Regional Advisor of the Los Angeles Region of SCBWI (Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators). In both posts, she organizes and produces writing events and conferences. In 2010 she founded the Children’s Book Writers of Los Angeles (CBW-LA.org). Through her work with CBW-LA Publications, N.A. has co-...

June 2023 Dante’s Old South Felix Charin was born in Neustrelitz as the son of a German mother and a Russian father. As a child and teenager, he performed at the Landestheater Neustrelitz and in a theater group in Bützow. During his school years, he lived temporarily in Russia and the United States. In 2012, he completed his degree at the HFF (University of Television and Film) in Munich. His dipl...

Edgar Kunz is the author of the poetry collections Fixer (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2023) and Tap Out (Ecco/HarperCollins, 2019), a New York Times New & Noteworthy pick. He has been a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, a MacDowell Fellow, a Teaching Fellow at Vanderbilt University, and a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. New poems appear in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, POETRY, Ame...

Eric Akoto , FRSA, is a British-Ghanaian-American entrepreneur and the founder of Litro Media Inc, publishing platforms such as Litro Magazine and Crayon Magazine to spotlight emerging and established global talents. Akoto is also the founder of Gemini Productions, a production company committed to bringing inspiring narratives to life. Akoto's initiatives reflect his commitment to internation...

March 2023 Dante’s Old South Alicia Blue It's difficult to pin down exact musical influences on Alicia Blue's Inner Child Work—and that's exactly how the California singer-songwriter likes it. Although her folk roots are never far from the surface, the album encompasses dreamy indie-rock ("Dog Days in L.A."), delicate pop meditations ("Saline Waters"), '90s alte...

Kendel Hippolyte was born in Castries, St. Lucia, in 1952. In the 1970s he studied and lived in Jamaica, receiving a BA from the University of the West Indies in 1976. Hippolyte is the author of several books of poetry, including Fault Lines (Peepal Tree Press, 2012), Night Vision (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2005), and Birthright (Peepal Tree Pr...

 Kendel Hippolyte was born in Castries, St. Lucia, in 1952. In the 1970s he studied and lived in Jamaica, receiving a BA from the University of the West Indies in 1976. Hippolyte is the author of several books of poetry, including Fault Lines (Peepal Tree Press, 2012), Night Vision (Triquarterly Books/Northwestern University Press, 2005), and Birthright (Peepal T...

December 2022’s Dante’s Old South Jay Clifford, frontman of Jump Little Children: Jump, Little Children is an American indie rock band that was formed in 1991 in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, United States. Known for its unique sound, energetic live performances, and willingness to interact with fans, the band has a devoted following and is a fixture in the Charleston, South Carolina music s...

November 2022’s Dante’s Old South: Robert Pinsky is one of America’s foremost poet-critics. He earned his BA from Rutgers University in 1962 and his MA and PhD in philosophy from Stanford University in 1966, where he was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in creative writing. Elected Poet Laureate of the United States in 1997, his tenure was marked by ambitious efforts to prove the power of poetry—not just...

October 2022’s Dante’s Old South Dorothy Rompalske is the Director and Chairperson of the Screenwriting MFA program at the David Lynch Graduate School of Cinematic Arts at Maharishi International University. She is the author of both feature film and documentary screenplays, and her magazine articles and profiles have appeared in numerous publications. Originally from New York City, Rompalske grad...

Rising Appalachia is a folk band with southern roots, founded by sisters Leah and Chloe Smith. Rising Appalachia has toured all over the world, from Italy to South America, to San Francisco and Leah and Chloe’s hometown of Atlanta, Georgia. These multi-talented sisters write their own songs, play several instruments including guitar, banjo, and fiddle, and have been releasing music since 2005. The...

Ellen Bass - A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ellen Bass’s most recent book is Indigo (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) . Among her awards are a Guggenheim Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, four Pushcart Prizes, and The Lambda Literary Award. Bass founded workshops at Salinas Valley State Prison and teaches in at Pacific University’s MFA program. A Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, El...

July 2022 Dante’s Old South Christopher Moore is the New York Times best-selling author of 18 novels, including Lamb, A Dirty Job, Noir, and Razzmatazz. You can find his web site at chrismoore.com and follow him on Twitter at @theauthorguy. Lynne Kemen is a citizen of Upstate New York. Her chapbook, More Than a Handful, was published in 2020. She is published in Silver Birch Pr...

June 2022 Dante’s Old South Diane Seuss Winner of the 2022 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry Winner of the 2021 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry Winner of the 2022 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry Collection Winner of the 2021 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Poetry Finalist for the 2022 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award “The sonnet, like poverty, teaches you what you can do / witho...

May 2022 Dante’s Old South Todd Boss is a poet, lyricist, and inventor, who sold all his possessions in 2018 to become a nomad. His most recent book of poems is  Someday the Plan of a Town , published by W. W. Norton & Co. https://www.toddbossoriginals.com/ Someday the Plan of a Town: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B098LT8TVP/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0 Hans Rueffert Ch...

April 2022’s Dante’s Old South In this episode we interview the winners of the Southern Collective Experience’s Asian American chapbook contest: 1st Place: Monica Kim is a queer writer and organizer. Born in South Korea, she now lives in Brooklyn, New York. She won the inaugural Jane Kenyon Chapbook Prize Award for her series of multiverse poems and her writing has been published in A Velvet Giant...

Ashley M. Jones is Poet Laureate of the state of Alabama (2022-2026). She holds an MFA in Poetry from Florida International University, and she is the author of Magic City Gospel (Hub City Press 2017),  dark / / thing (Pleiades Press 2019), and REPARATIONS NOW! (Hub City Press 2021). Her poetry has earned several awards, including the Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers Award, the Silver Medal in t...

January 2022 Dante’s Old South Skye Jackson was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has served as a poetry editor for  Bayou Magazine, French Quarter Journal  &  Tilted House.  Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in  Electric Literature, Green Mountains Review ,  RATTLE  and elsewhere. Her debut chapbook,  A Faster Grave , won the 201...

December 2021’s Dante’s Old South Alina Stefanescu  Alina Stefanescu was born in Romania and lives in Birmingham, Alabama with her partner and several intense mammals. Recent books include a creative nonfiction chapbook, Ribald (Bull City Press Inch Series, Nov. 2020) and Dor, which won the Wandering Aengus Press Prize (September 2021).   Her debut fiction collection, Every Mask I T...

Jasper Fforde: Jasper began his career in the film industry, and for nineteen years held a variety of posts on such movies as  Goldeneye, The Mask of Zorro  and  Entrapment . Secretly harbouring a desire to tell his own stories rather than help other people tell their's, Jasper started writing in 1988, and spent eleven years secretly writing novel after novel as he st...

Catherine Mayer is a bestselling author, journalist, and activist. She is the co-founder and President of the Women’s Equality Party.  Her books include Amortality: The Pleasures and Perils of Living Agelessly; Charles: The Heart of a King, and Attack of the Fifty Foot Women: How Gender Equality Can Save the World! Her recent memoir, Good Grief: Embracing Life at a Time of Death, contains let...

August 2021 Dante’s Old South Chen Chen: Chen Chen is the author of the forthcoming poetry collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA Editions, 2022) and the forthcoming book of essays, In Cahoots with the Rabbit God (Noemi Press, 2023) . His debut book of poems, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017) , was longlisted for the Nati...

July 2021 Dante’s Old South David Shaw: Acclaimed singer, songwriter, musician, and producer David Shaw’s first-ever solo album (Yokoko Records/C3 Records) finds The Revivalists frontman following the direction of his own internal compass, riling up his raw rock ‘n’ roll impulses as he opens up like never before as a lyricist, poet, and storyteller. The journey of David’s solo artistry began as he...