02/04/2021
Happy National Poetry Month! Host Joshua Corwin interviews Kalpna Singh-Chitnis (Life and Legends) and Alexis Rhone Fancher (Cultural Weekly) for Assiduous Dust Season 2 Episode 3. Singh-Chitnis' YouTube Premiere will be 4:30pm PDT on Friday, April 2
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJgOqMTxYE4.) Fancher's interview will be available on Anchor, Spotify, etc. on 6pm PDT on Friday, April 2.
Kalpna Singh-Chitnis is an Indian American poet, writer, and Editor-in-Chief of Life and Legends. She is the author of four poetry books, and her works have appeared in notable journals like World Literature Today, California Quarterly, Indian Literature, Pirene's Fountain, etc. Her full-length poetry collection Bare Soul was awarded the 2017 "Naji Naaman Literary Prize for creativity." Her awards and honors include the "Bihar Rajbhasha Award," given by the government of Bihar, India, and the "Rajiv Gandhi Global Excellence Award." Her poems have been translated into Spanish, French, Italian, German, Chez, Arabic, Nepali, Hindi, and other Indian languages. Her works have been included in several anthologies. The most recent among them are 100 Great Indian Poems (Bloomsbury, India) Unseen (Skylark Publications, UK), Collateral Damage, Carrying the Branch Poets in Search of Peace (Glass Lyre Press, USA), and Paws Healing The Earth (River Paw Press). A former lecturer of Political Science, Kalpna Singh-Chitnis holds a degree in Film Directing from the New York Film Academy and works as an independent filmmaker in Hollywood. https://kalpnasinghchitnis.com/
Alexis Rhone Fancher is published in Best American Poetry, Rattle, Poetry East, Hobart, VerseDaily, American Journal of Poetry, Duende, SWWIM, Plume, Diode, Pedestal Magazine, Wide Awake: Poets of Los Angeles, and elsewhere. She’s authored five published poetry collections, most recently, Ju**ie Wife (Moon Tide Press, 2018), and The Dead Kid Poems (KYSO Flash Press, 2019). EROTIC: New & Selected, from New York Quarterly, published in March, and another full-length collection (in Italian) by Edizioni Ensemble, Italia,
will be published in Spring, 2021. Her photographs are published worldwide, including River Styx, and the covers of Pithead Chapel, Heyday and Witness. A multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Alexis is poetry editor of Cultural Weekly. www.alexisrhonefancher.com
Joshua Corwin, a Los Angeles native, is a neurodiverse, 2-time Pushcart Prize-nominated, Best of the Net-nominated poet and Winner of the 2021 Spillwords Press Award for Poetic Publication of Year. His poetry memoir Becoming Vulnerable (2020) details his experience with autism, addiction, sobriety and spirituality. His work has appeared in Winning Writers, The Somerville Times, Palisadian-Post, National Beat Poetry Foundation, Stanford University’s Life in Quarantine and more. He has lectured at UCLA, published alongside Lawrence Ferlinghetti and read with 2013 U.S. Inaugural Poet Richard Blanco. He hosts the poetry podcast “Assiduous Dust,” writes the weekly “Incentovise” column for Oddball Magazine and teaches poetry to neurodiverse individuals and autistic addicts in recovery at The Miracle Project, an autism nonprofit. Corwin is the editor and producer of Assiduous Dust: Home of the OTSCP, Vol. 1, featuring a collaboration with 36 award-winning poets demonstrating one of his invented forms of poetry. He is currently working on an existential novel about an alcoholic lawyer plagued with suicidal ideation. Please visit www.joshuacorwin.com.
