Tom Perrotta

Tom Perrotta is the bestselling author of nine works of fiction, including Election and Little Children, both of which were made into Oscar-nominated films, and The Leftovers, which was adapted into a critically acclaimed, Peabody Award-winning HBO series. His other books include Bad Haircut, The Wishbones, Joe College, The Abstinence Teacher, Nine Inches, and his newest, Mrs. Fletcher. His work has been translated into a multitude of languages. Perrotta grew up in New Jersey and lives outside of Boston.

portrait of tom perrotta by Mia Funk

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Alex Barnett. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

James McDaniel

James McDaniel is an actor and director best known for his award winning performances on NYPD Blue, Detroit 187, and Edge of America. When he’s not acting in front of the camera you can find James on and off-Broadway starring in works like Before it Hits Home, August Wilson’s Joe Turners Come and Gone, and most recently A Soldier’s Play. James also created the role Paul, in Six Degrees of Separation, setting the stage for future Black actors like Will Smith, who reprised the role in 1993. His television credits include Orange is the New Black, Madame Secretary, and most recently, Hysteria, streaming on Amazon Prime. Other film credits include The Battle for Bunker Hill, Steel City, and Malcolm X, amongst many others.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Ua Hayes. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Yves Winkin

Yves Winkin is Distinguished Emeritus Professor at the University of Liège and Honorary Professor at the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. He proposed an "anthropology of communication" based on an ethnographic approach. He was deputy director of the École normale supérieure de Lyon, director of the French Institute of Education and director of the musée des Arts et Métiers. He is the author of several books, most recently Réinventer les musées?

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Sophie Mackin. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Robert Nathan

Robert Nathan is an award-winning television producer, screenwriter, journalist, and novelist. Best known for his work on the Law & Order television franchise and his novel The White Tiger. He has worked in politics, broadcast and print journalism, film, and television. Nathan joined the original writing staff of Law & Order, working on three series in the franchise. Nathan’s script for the episode “Manhood,” co-written with Walon Green, holds the franchise’s only Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series. He was also on the original staff of the TV series ER and received a Peabody Award. Nathan has received four Emmy nominations, an Edgar Award nomination, the GLAAD Media Award, the Silver Gavel Award, the Shine Award, and a Humanitas Award nomination.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Sophie Mackin. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Bruce Wolosoff

Bruce Wolosoff is a composer and pianist whose work has been recognized for the way it integrates modern, classical, jazz, and blues together into "an authentic American voice". In recent years, Wolosoff has been composing music in response to visual art. "Astronomer's Key", inspired by the artwork of Milton Resnick, was commissioned by the Roswell Artists in Residence Foundation for the Montage Music Society in celebration of the Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program's 50th Anniversary. “The Loom”, inspired by the watercolors of Eric Fischl, was commissioned by the Eroica Trio and premiered at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. “for April” a work for cello and piano inspired by the charcoal drawings of April Gornik was recorded by Wolosoff with cellist Sara Sant'Ambrogio and released as part of a book of Gornik’s drawings.In July 2018, Bruce Wolosoff’s “Concerto for Cello and Orchestra” was recorded in London by Sara Sant’Ambrogio and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Grzegorz Nowak. ​ A frequent collaborator in the field of dance, Wolosoff has collaborated with choreographer Ann Reinking on two ballets for Thodos Dance Chicago. “The White City” was named "Best Dance of 2011" by the Chicago Sun-Times, and a film version of “A Light in the Dark”, based on the story of Helen Keller and Ann Sullivan, received an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Achievement for Arts Programming. Wolosoff’s recording “Darkling, I Listen” is being used for a new Ann Reinking ballet based on the life of John Keats. An accomplished pianist as well, Bruce Wolosoff received early acclaim for a recording of piano music by Busoni. More recently, he has performed and recorded his own compositions, including "Shenandoah Variations", “Many Worlds", "Four Blues", and "Darkling, I Listen”. Wolosoff’s discography also includes “Songs without Words” on Naxos American Classics. Mia sat down with Bruce in his home on Shelter Island to discuss his creative life and music.

Alan Edward Bell

Film editor Alan Edward Bell has cut three of The Hunger Games series. He also edited (500) Days of Summer, Water for Elephants, Red Sparrow, The Dark Tower, The Amazing Spiderman, and other films. A former competitive rock-climber and guide, Alan transitioned to editing after spending time around film people while taking them on climbing expeditions. That his editing often pushes the boundaries of what is technically possible is more amazing when you consider he is self-taught. After years in Hollywood, Bell now lives and edits from his studio in New Hampshire, where he also practices silversmithing.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Maggie Choy. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis* and performed by the Athenian Trio.

SUSAN SCARF MERRELL

Susan Scarf Merrell is the author of Shirley: A Novel, which is a film starring Elisabeth Moss and Michael Stuhlbarg. She is also the author of A Member of the Family, and The Accidental Bond: How Sibling Connections Influence Adult Relationships. She co-directs the Southampton Writers Conference, is program director (along with Meg Wolitzer) of the novel incubator program, BookEnds, and teaches in the MFA in Creative Writing & Literature at Stony Brook Southampton. She served as fiction editor of The Southampton Review. Essays, book reviews and short fiction appear most recently in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Common Online, The Washington Post, and East Magazine.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

So just tell me what, I knew you went to Bennington, and there are many interesting writers, but what attracted you particularly to Shirley Jackson?

SUSAN SCARF MERRELL

I went up to Bennington, to the writing seminars, with my husband to give a talk. And while I was giving the talk, I sat in on some of the graduate lectures that the writing seminars MFA candidates have to do. And I got in the car to drive home, and I said to my husband, “I want to grad school. I want to go there.” And I had already published two books at that point. I really, there was no logical reason I would be going to grad school, but I had always sort of thought that there was something that I would be more comfortable with if I went through a grad program. So six months after I gave that talk, I was in the next class at the writing seminars. And it’s a low residency program, so you develop a reading program with your mentor and you exchange fiction and annotations on the books that you’re reading, all semester long, for six months. And so in the very first meeting that I had with this writer named Rachel Paston, she said, “What is it that you’re interested in learning?” And I said, “I really want to write about domestic things, but with a twist, with some kind of magic in them.” And she said, “Have you ever read Shirley Jackson?”

I had read Haunting of Hill House, you know, when I was twelve, and I went back home and reread Haunting of Hill House, and then I read We Have Always Lived in the Castle, and by the end of the semester, I had read everything Shirley had written. I came back up to school for my second semester, and I was meeting with my new mentor, and I said I had been reading her. He said, “You know, she lived here, she lived and worked here.” And I said no, I had no idea because I know nothing about her life story. So then I went to the library at the college, and I realized that she lived in a house, one of the two houses that she lived in the whole time she lived in Bennington, was a house that I had walked by every day on my way to get coffee. That market I was buying my cup of coffee every morning was Powers Market where the idea for the Lottery came to her. There’s a famous story about how she came running home from the grocery store, pushing the pram up the hill, and went in and wrote the story in three hours. So, it just kept happening for me that I would meet somebody who would say, “Oh, my husband was best friends with one of the Hyman children, one of Shirley’s children when they were in high school” or “I have this treasure trove of letters” or “I know this person who was Shirley’s husband’s best friend”. Things just kept happening, she just kept sort of pushing into my consciousness in some way. In many ways, I felt as if she found me, I didn’t find her.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

And what did you discover about her, and yourself, in the writing of the novel?

SCARF MERRELL

That’s such a good question. Haha. I’m not entirely sure what I discovered about her… I certainly, what I imagined about her, was how she got from A to Z, in a certain way. And what it would be like to go through a fallow period in one’s career. I was really writing about a period of time where she was agoraphobic, and she didn’t leave the house and wasn’t writing. That was tremendously interesting to me, and I think, something that resonated for me personally because, at the time that I went to grad school, I had really been wrestling with whether I wanted to continue writing or not, and whether I had anything else that I wanted to say. So, I guess you can say, I learned that writers write no matter what. Shirley has this wonderful moment in her journals, which as I saw in the Library of Congress and so well-worth going to look at, I cannot recommend that journey highly enough, where she is responding to something that her therapist said to her. She writes in her journal, “Writing is the way out. Writing is the way out. Writing is the way out.” And I think that’s true. I learned something about how novelistic truth is different from human truth, in writing this book. As I say for myself, no matter what, I’m just going to keep doing it. No matter what happens, it isn’t really a thing that I have a choice about doing. Not in a kind of weird, overly-dramatic way, it’s just something I love to do, so much.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

And in your own work, and I’m thinking about other things you’ve dealt with in other books that focus on family, whether fiction or nonfiction. Can you discuss some of those themes? We were talking before, at dinner the other night, about architecture, bringing in your husband, James Merrell…

SCARF MERRELL

Also a Jim, haha. [referring to James Harris, a popular figure in Shirley Jackson’s writing]

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

A Jim! I was thinking about that! Yeah, you have your own-

SCARF MERRELL

I have my own Jim!

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Yeah... and how you approach books and stories from that point of view [the point of view of architecture]?

SCARF MERRELL

So, that’s something that I have really grown into. I think, with Shirley, that was the first time that I very consciously used the notion of what a house is, and what a house does for a character, as part of the planning of the book. Of course, because Shirley was agoraphobic, I mean it was sort of given to me in a certain way. But I also think it was part of the appeal for me. The idea of a novel as a structured narrative that you wander through, and that the intent of the architect, the writer, the intent is to drive you through the rooms with a particular kind of information-reveal. That’s something that I think Jim brings very consciously to his design-work, in terms of how you live and work in houses that he creates. And I have been trying more and more to bring to my written worlds, in terms of how they are experienced as wholes, as whole institutions that you go through.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Sure, to different extents, whether it’s a larger narrative or not, your world-building… and I think particularly with novels, short stories, it depends on the length, but people inhabit novels, and they are sorry to leave them, and they return to them. They reread them, they have that sense.

SCARF MERRELL

Sure, and often there is this sense that you can walk through a house of a novel that you have really loved. You can walk through Northanger Abbey a thousand times. Or Moby Dick. Or Light in August. These are books that welcome you back time and time again. I think that’s true of Shirley’s work. I’ve read all of her books, multiple times, and they never cease to reveal new things to me. And that would be a goal for me, as well. Something I would strive towards, that I would like that kind of world-building to take place. That you can see a different view out every window every time you pass them.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

How can we better improve our education models? To be teaching “embracing the arts”, creating more creative individuals, engaged individuals, not just in arts education, but throughout?

SCARF MERRELL

Oh gosh, I don’t know. (laughing)

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Susan, solve it for us! (laughing)

SCARF MERRELL

Obviously, I believe that reading is incredibly important for creating empathy, and for enhancing the imagination. I think, the idea that I read somewhere earlier this week, that because of the Common Core, many students graduate from high school never having read a novel, you know, that’s kind of astounding to me. I think that all the research that says we develop empathy through imagining the lives of others. The novel is a form that has been created for that purpose. I don’t see how we cannot require our students to read stories. That would be my broadside, we must read. You know, people just have to read.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of the The Creative Process.

Jane Smiley

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and most recently, The Last Hundred Years Trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. She is also the author of several works of nonfiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has also received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.

Photo: © Derek Shapton

Howard Rodman

Howard A. Rodman is a screenwriter, author and educator. His novels include The Great Eastern and Destiny Express. As a screenwriter, Rodman wrote Savage Grace, with Julianne Moore and Eddie Redmayne, nominated for Best Screenplay at the 2009 Spirit Awards, and AUGUST, starring Josh Hartnett and David Bowie. He also wrote Joe Gould’s Secret, the opening night film of the Sundance Film Festival, based on the memoir by iconic New Yorker writer Joseph Mitchell. He is the past president of the Writers Guild of America West; professor of screenwriting at USC's School of Cinematic Arts; a member of the National Film Preservation Board; and an artistic director of the Sundance Screenwriting Labs. 

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Bret Young. Digital Media Coordinator is Yu Young Lee. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

GABRIELLE SELZ

Gabrielle Selz is the author of Unstill Life: A Daughter’s Memoir of Art and Love in the Age of Abstraction, and Light on Fire: The Art and Life of Sam Francis. Unstill Life received the best memoir of the year award from the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA) and was chosen as one of the best books of the year by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Berkeleyside.

Selz holds a special interest in the intersection of memory, history, cultural criticism, and art. As a child, she bounced between the bohemian art worlds of New York and Berkeley, California. Her father, Peter Selz, was the Chief Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, before he founded the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive. Her mother, Thalia Selz, was a writer and the founding editor of Story Quarterly. In 1969, Thalia selected the original tenants for Westbeth, the largest artists housing project in the country, and the family then moved to live alongside artists like Diane Arbus and Merce Cunningham. Introduced to Sam Francis as a child, her interest in his life, career and what motivated his extraordinary contributions, expanded while she was researching and writing Unstill Life.

Selz has contributed to The New Yorker, The New York Times, More Magazine, The Rumpus and the L.A. Times. Her fiction has appeared in Fiction Magazine and her art criticism in Art Papers, Hyperallergic and Newsday and the Huffington Post. She is a past recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Nonfiction and is a Moth Story Slam Winner.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Dano Nissen. “Winter Time” was composed by Nikolas Anadolis and performed by the Athenian Trio.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.

MARIO ALBERTO ZAMBRANO

Mario Alberto Zambrano was a contemporary ballet dancer before dedicating his time to writing fiction. He has lived in Israel, The Netherlands, Germany, Spain, and Japan, and has danced for Hubbard Street Dance Chicago, Nederlands Dans Theater, Ballett Frankfurt, and Batsheva Dance Company. He graduated from The New School as a Riggio Honors Fellow and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop as an Iowa Arts Fellow, where he also received a John C. Schupes Fellowship for Excellence in Fiction. Lotería is his first novel.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What are your views on the future of communication and how technology is changing the way we communicate, read, interact with the world and our imaginations?

MARIO ALBERTO ZAMBRANO

The other day I was explaining to one of my students in my Dance on Camera course how a montage worked in film. By juxtaposing uninflected images together you create mood, atmosphere, and sometimes narrative. For example, seeing the sequence of a rose, an envelope, and sunset communicates something entirely different than say a rose, an envelope, and an image of shattered glass. In trying to explain this to him I asked, what does a barf-face emoticon followed by a champagne glass followed by a gelcap say to you? He laughed and understood perfectly. 

The latest generation—our #hashtag “Z” Generation— are engendering a language of visual cues and subjects that discards language in the way we’ve been using it for hundreds of years; ironically, we’re at a point when we’re returning to an ancient skill, using the juxtaposition of uninflected images—now with emoticon texting. I myself have replied to text messages without using a single letter, and I find this peculiar and interesting. When the first e-reader was introduced many voracious readers cringed at the idea, advocating for the page, the textile experience, the history of paper between the fingers as you read through a book. Reading paperbacks was something we swore we’d stick to. But as time passes I find more and more people using tablets. Technology is moving at such a velocity that it’s difficult to comprehend what it’s doing to us culturally and psychologically. Even though we resist innovations at the start, they find their way into our homes and everyday lifestyles after awhile. What remains, what is constant and will never go away is the urgent need we have to express ourselves using color and shape, prose and poetry. On some days, I find what technology is introducing astounding, yet on others I miss the solitude of a book, an armchair, and a room with a view—without Wifi!

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What are your views on the importance of creativity and the humanities?

ZAMBRANO

When I’m working with my students, whom are so wonderfully skilled, what I bump up against when trying to arouse a creative rigor is their incessant need to know the correct answer. They’re always searching for it, as they’ve been trained to do from their education, which is what’s gotten them where they are. But if the page is blank, if the answer is instead a question they need to propose, they grow uncomfortable. What I try to tell them is that to be creative is not always about finding the answer but looking for the interesting questions, about walking into the laboratory of the creative mind and becoming familiar there with the unknowing while having faith that something will be discovered. With all the chaos in the world, when we study our instincts and explore our imaginative potential, an expression of how we see this chaos and how we experience the world is realized. That kind of deeper understanding is as valuable to me as the sciences, because to make art, to be creative, is a science. We are, whether it be recognized are not, always inherently creative. To manifest, to invent, to dream—the world is in constant change because of these motivations. Everyone is negotiating challenges that require creativity in order to overcome them. To survive, to understand, to celebrate, to acknowledge the wondrous surprise of imagination. It’s in our nature, so essential and necessary. 

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

How do you communicate the role dance plays in our lives to student who are not dancers?

ZAMBRANO

I come from a dance world where everyone valued dance with such importance that I think we believed we couldn’t live without it, so when I come across students majoring in other disciplines—Economics, Computer Science, Government—who’ve never practiced dance on a regular basis, at first I’m proud. I’m proud that somehow they find their way to my classroom and are willing to give dance a shot. Second, I'm surprised at how in awe they are when I teach them how to create a wave in their spine, and how that sensation is something that can give them pleasure, that they’re designing movement with their bodies. Third, I’m delighted, delighted to help them find that intelligence in themselves.

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

Could talk a bit about what drew you to dance?

ZAMBRANO

I started dancing so young that it’s difficult for me to comprehend a life without some sort of physical practice that brings effort and pleasure together—apart from sports. I think what some students dismiss is the determination one can get from wanting more of themselves when they dance. In any sport there’s a goal and you try to complete the goal; you want to win. That’s the point. So what’s the point of dancing? In dance, and in any other art really, you have to find the game that keeps you in it. Some students don’t know how to get there, they don’t know how to find themselves in the game that is their creative field. But when they find it, or glimmers of it—we call those A-ha! moments—I believe that what they discover is that they’re winning a better understanding of who they are, as human beings and as artists. 

THE CREATIVE PROCESS

What does your experience of dance make you appreciate about writing? What has writing made you appreciate about dance and theater?

ZAMBRANO

When I started writing I was, truth be told, relieved that I didn’t have to wake up and go to ballet class everyday. I enjoyed the long hours at the desk while sipping bottomless cappuccinos. I did that for six years until I missed the movement, the mere physicality of dancing. At first, when I was writing it was all a wonderfully realized ballet that was happening in my head. I was bringing all of the sensibilities I’d acquired as a dancer into my writing, and it felt so similar to making a ballet. The language was the cast and I could make them dance however I liked. Writing and dancing offer such wonderfully different experiences. One is entirely cerebral while the other is sensual and in constant motion. If we break down the elements of style, technique and craft, structure and voice in both art forms, they are related by a current of motivation and sensibility. Each needs those two things. The grammar of the body and the grace of style—they’re interchangeable. The common denominator is the meter, the pace, the music each of them need in order to move forward. And I absolutely love that, the music they share. You read Virginia Woolf and you're listening to a song; you watch Nureyev and you're seeing a song. 

Mario Alberto Zambrano in Ohad Naharin’s Virus.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.