Digging Through with Gessy Alvarez

Digging Press

Digging Through with Gessy Alvarez is a podcast for cultural omnivores. Gessy Alvarez shares her love of art and culture as well as some of her offbeat observations. No snark. No bark. Just good talk. ©️Digging Press LLC DiggingPress.com read less
Society & CultureSociety & Culture

Episodes

Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Awabi 2nd Edition
Jul 8 2022
Mandy-Suzanne Wong, Awabi 2nd Edition
Gessy Alvarez talks to Digging Press author Mandy-Suzanne Wong about her chapbook Awabi. About Awabi: A Duet of Short Stories Mandy-Suzanne Wong deftly explores the complex world of the ama — ocean women, mostly elderly, who eke out a living while diving deep to capture abalone, snails, and otherworldly sea creatures for food. Unlike the men of the fictional village of Kaiyono who fish from boats, the ama battle the cold currents without scuba tanks or snorkels. They do this while facing the threat of an ecological crisis they had no hand in causing. Suffused with lyrical imagery and profound longing, Mandy-Suzanne Wong creates evocative moments of love, pride, jealousy, misunderstanding, and sacrifice in this duet of short stories. Winner of the Digging Press Chapbook Series Award and a Wardrobe’s Best Dressed selection, Awabi is in its second edition. About the Author: Mandy-Suzanne Wong is a Bermudian writer of fiction and essays. Her debut novel, Drafts of a Suicide Note (Regal House, 2019), was a Foreword INDIES finalist, Independent Publisher Award winner, NextGen Indies Award winner, and PEN Open Book Award nominee. Listen, we all bleed (New Rivers, 2021), her first essay collection, was an ASLE Book Award finalist, an EcoLit Best Environmental Book of 2021, and a PEN/Galbraith nominee. Her fiction chapbook Awabi (Digging Press, 2022), winner of the 2018 Digging Press Chapbook Series Award, is now in its second edition. Her next novel, The Box (Graywolf), is forthcoming in 2023. You can find out more about Mandy-Suzanne at mandysuzannewong.com or follow her on Twitter @MandySuzanneW Awabi is available to buy at DiggingPress.com. Intro and Closing Music Credits: John Sib for Pixabay. "Tropical House."
Jenny Shank - Mixed Company
Jan 1 2022
Jenny Shank - Mixed Company
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 Denver high school clashes with a white mountain team. In "Casa del Rey," a cautious pregnant woman must contend with her out-of-control and intrusive neighbor. In "La Sexycana," a bottom-feeding journalist ventures to a dance club to confront the young Latina woman she mentored as a teenager who then cut off all contact with her. "Lightest Lights Against Darkest Darks" follows a white middle schooler bused to a majority Black school who falls under the spell of her magnetic and racially ambiguous art teacher. In "Signing for Linemen," a graduate student in medieval literature takes a job as a summer tutor for a college football team and ends up learning more than she expected about athletes, American Sign Language, and herself. In "Local Honey," middle-aged white parents bring their adopted Black teenage son to a Wu-Tang Clan concert in an attempt to bond with him. The characters find their initial perceptions and ideas overturned in these stories laced with humor, heart, and grit. Jenny Shank forges fiction out of the sparks that fly when diverse people encounter one another. You can follow Jenny at: Website: www.jennyshank.com Twitter: @jennyshank Intro and Closing Music Credits: John Sib for Pixabay. "Tropical House."