It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 34: Julie Averill!
Julie Averill embraces visibility and vulnerability in her business leader memoir Chief Impact Officer. We discuss how authenticity in leadership is strategically necessary, building a psychologically safe culture, and the power of breaking down the walls and letting people see you for who you are.
Bio:
Julie Averill has spent two decades scaling companies and the teams inside them. At lululemon, she led the technology that powered the business as it grew from $2 billion to over $10 billion, building global teams across four continents and the operating model to sustain that growth. Before that, she led digital and omni-channel transformations at Nordstrom and REI, through system failures, high-stakes crises, and the messy reality of turning technology into business results at scale.
Today, through Gold Thread, she and her senior partners advise boards, CEOs, and founders on AI strategy and workforce readiness, the space where most transformations stall. She also serves as an independent board director and lives in Bellevue, Washington, with her wife Cindy.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 33: Louis Flint Ceci!
Louis Flint Ceci shares his novel The Cross Quarter Mysteries. We discuss writing a suspenseful murder that explores multiple meanings of “mystery.” Plus the magic of the setting, the impact of trauma, and finding love and peace.
Bio:
Louis Flint Ceci is an author, educator, and retired software engineer. His published works include poems, short stories, autobigraphical essays, and a novel. He has also published scholarly works on poetics, linguistics, and artificial neural networks. He is a masters swimmer, having competed in the past four Gay Games, the FINA World Championships in Perth and Montreal, and numerous IGLA meets. He won the gold medal in the Poetic Justice poetry slam at the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 32: Andy Barrow!
Andy Barrow shares his debut novel Peter in Progress. We discuss coming out later in life and facing self-shame as well as other people’s scrutiny, plus finding joy in wellness, queer friendships + situationships, and embracing a life of growth.
Bio:
Andy Barrow is a New York-based writer whose debut novel, Peter in Progress, draws inspiration from his own later-in-life gay awakening. Despite the challenges of a thirty-something reckoning, Andy counts his coming out—and ongoing “second” adolescence—as his most wonderful life chapter. His return to writing fiction, which was a passion in his younger years, has been no small part of that joy. Gay life has been too big, beautiful, delirious, and complicated to not pick up the pen!
While embracing life as a gay man and author, Andy somehow manages to maintain a day job; he’s a proud educator who has taught, designed and led middle and high schools, and now consults with schools and districts. He has won awards from Harvard University and Teach for America for his teaching, and his writing on education has been published in both popular periodicals (Chalkbeat, Grown and Flown) and academic journals (Penn, UCLA). He holds a doctorate in curriculum, instruction, and innovation from the University of Virginia, and his dissertation on the relationship between student struggle and deeper learning won the departmental award.
When not writing or teaching, Andy is likely perfecting his backhand, nabbing last-minute theater tickets, or making up for lost time on the dance floor—preferably with ‘90s icons (Crystal, CeCe, Whitney…) on rotation.
An unabashed extrovert, Andy is always looking to expand his network and to connect with fellow creatives—especially queer ones.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 31: Rob Costello!
Rob Costello shares his debut YA novel An Ugly World for Beautiful Boys. We discuss past trauma, facing shame, and why the young adult genre can be dark. We then talk about his anthology We Mostly Come Out at Night, and the queer joy he and the contributors share through monsters.
Bio:
Before Rob Costello discovered writing, he cleaned toilets and flipped burgers for a living. He dealt cards in a casino. He processed trade documents for an international bank. He dispatched police and emergency services, and answered 911 calls. He’s been a receptionist, a secretary, and a chief of staff. He was a social media manager for a while and even a speechwriter.
In 2012, he earned his MFA degree in Writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts. He’s proud of that, but let us know it doesn’t mean he knows how to write any better than anybody else. It just means he tried really hard and did his best.
Rob’s also an alumnus of the Millay Arts, a beautiful and secluded retreat for artists and writers located on the former estate of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. It’s an amazing place he highly recommends!
In addition to writing short stories and novels, he also teaches.
In June of 2023, Rob launched R(ev)ise and Shine! (with co-founders Lesa Cline-Ransome, Jo Knowles, and Jennifer Richard Jacobson), an online writing community where passionate writers come together to learn, grow, & thrive.
He and his husband live on top of a wide and windy hill in the countryside of upstate New York, where they dutifully take orders from their four-legged overlords who graciously allow them to live there. And feed them. And walk them twice daily. And pick up their poo.
Rob is an active member of the Horror Writers Association (HWA) and a full member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA).
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 30: Benjamin Feliciano!
Benjamin Feliciano joins us to announce the release of his novel Bound: For Greatness. We discuss our joy of endless summer adventures with kids on bikes, growing into a sense of one’s self while facing the supernatural, hunting down the right cover artist, and the future of growing up with the series.
Bio:
Benjamin Wesley Feliciano is an author, lead singer of the band Younger Than Neil, founder of The Ideology Art Collective, painter, and a conceptual performance artist. His work has been exhibited in Memento Mori Gallery, Blue Tile Gallery, and 40 West Gallery.
He hosts a free monthly art club every first Sunday at Memento Mori Gallery & Tattoo.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 29: Abigail de Niverville!
Abigail de Niverville returns with the rerelease of I Knew Him and the companion novel Be True. We discuss bi-erasure, prejudice, friendship, and character growth through discomfort. We then delve into talking about crafting contemporary romances and overcoming a writing slump
Bio:
Abigail de Niverville is a Moncton-born author living in Toronto, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2017 with a Master’s of Composition. While studying music, Abigail would escape the daily stresses of university life by writing stories and novels. Her experiences in theatre performance and production often influence her creative works. She continues to dedicate her free time to writing novels, poetry, and songs.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
Or Listen/Watch Right Here:
October 9, 2020
It gives us great pleasure to welcome Abigail de Niverville back as the guest on Episode 289 – They Went There!
Abigail de Niverville returns to share her latest novel, We Go Together, and we discuss healing from abuse, bi-representation, a trans love interest, and music’s role in a story. A great discussion all the way around.
Abigail de Niverville is a Moncton-born composer and author living in Toronto, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2017 with a Master’s of Composition, having studied with Alexander Rapoport. She has previously studied with Kevin Morse at Mount Allison University. While studying music, Abigail would often escape the daily stresses of university life by writing stories and novels. Her experiences in theatre performance and production often influence her creative works in all mediums. In 2019, her debut novel I Knew Him was released by NineStar Press. She continues to dedicate her time writing novels, poetry, and songs.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
Or Listen/Watch Right Here:
OR Watch On YouTube!
April 26, 2019
It gives us great pleasure to welcome Abigail de Niverville as the guest on Episode 213 – Unnecessarily Mysterious!
Abigail de Niverville joins us to discuss her new novel, I Knew Him, as well as how her musical composition informed her work and her take on YA literature.
Abigail de Niverville is a Moncton-born composer and author living in Toronto, Ontario. She graduated from the University of Toronto in 2017 with a Master’s of Composition, having studied with Alexander Rapoport. She has previously studied with Kevin Morse at Mount Allison University. Her experiences in theatre performance and production often influence her creative works.
Recent musical works include: Letters (for tenor and piano), Let Me In (for Ensemble Atlantica), and October 4th, 1967 (a mini opera).
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 28: Dean Klinkenberg!
Dean Klinkenberg shares The Frank Dodge Mystery 4: Murder On The Mississippi. We discuss writing noir in a contemporary setting, bringing an amateur sleuth life, and looking at a 40 year race murder. Then we look at the radical choice to trust the world with his upcoming travel memoir Better Safe Than Sorry?
Bio:
Dean Klinkenberg writes crime fiction carved from the currents of the Mississippi River. He’s the author of the Frank Dodge mysteries, where a restless writer keeps stumbling into trouble in river towns from Minnesota to New Orleans—cold secrets, crooked deals, and the kind of neighbors who smile while they lie.
The river isn’t just a backdrop for Dean; it’s the engine of the stories. He chases its history and characters, then turns what he finds into twists, suspects, and places you can smell and feel. Along the way, Frank Dodge wrestles with the same things the rest of us do—who we are, what we owe, and how to hold on to the people we love when the current gets rough.
Dean grew up in the Midwest, first fell for the Mississippi in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and now lives in St. Louis, a short drive from Old Man River. When he’s not sending Dodge into danger, he’s roaming river towns, filling notebooks, and taking photos for the next mystery. If you like noir with a strong sense of place, start the Frank Dodge series and come see what the river is hiding.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 27: Charles Close!
Charles Close shares The Blood Thief 1: The Short Happy Life of Alex Rose. We discuss serendipity, gratitude, taking action in life, world-building, vampires, and human-level stories told as big supernatural adventures.
Bio:
Charles Lawrence Close III got his first published novel rolling during the pandemic when he should have been working on his capstone project for his master’s degree at Johns Hopkins in NGO management. He wrote enough to fill two books and still managed to pull straight A’s and graduate with high honors. The Blood Thief, Vol. 1: The Short Happy Life of Alex Rose is sort of his first book. He also wrote a Jack Kerouac style novel about his crazy times living in Mexico and Russia, but he felt it was a little self-indulgent and will probably revise it at some point when he gets all the fictional characters that are spinning around in his brain a home on paper. The next edition of Alex Rose’s adventures is well on the way with The Blood Thief, Vol. 2: My Own Personal Bethlehem coming out soon!
He cares deeply about giving back to the community and believes that doing unto others as you would have them do to you is the best way to live. When he isn’t volunteering for a nonprofit, you can find him skating Pride parades with a synchronized dance crew, practicing jian-fa, learning the piano or turntables, and climbing cliffs and gym walls like a savagely dazzling, inappropriately velvet-wearing creature of the night.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 26: Skylar Lyralen Kaye!
Skylar Lyralen Kaye shares faer memoir: Bachelorx! We dive into the power and importance of storytelling, the hope in queer identities, dating on the apps mid-life, coming out as nonbinary and having a plural identity, and heading out onto the water seeking balance in life.
Bio:
Skylar Lyralen Kaye has been starting fires with words for over three decades — on stages, on screens, on the page, and in the streets. Fae writes the stories other people are afraid to tell. The ones that keep you up at night, laughing and crying.
Kaye’s work has been produced on stages across the country, published in literary journals including Calyx, Phoebe, and Girlfriends, Diva, Out, Attitude and Happy Magazine. They exploded onto film with the web series Assigned Female at Birth, winner of 13 film festival awards and the 2021 NE Film Star Award. Fae’s one-person show My Preferred Pronoun Is We (AKA Many Trump Refugees in One Body) won Best in Fringe at the San Francisco Fringe Festival. Add to that the Moth Story Slam, the Boston Story Slam, the 2015 Meryl Streep Writers Lab, and the 2002 Lipkin Prize in Playwriting — and you start to get the picture. Almost an unfair number of awards.
Kaye holds a BA in English from the University of Arizona and an MFA in Theater from Sarah Lawrence College. Fae is also a Pushcart Prize-nominated fiction writer, a winning slam poet and lifelong queer social justice activist.
Fae writes because silence is not an option — though fae has been known to laugh ‘til they cry while burning it all down.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 25: Natalie Simone!
Natalie Simone joins us to discuss queer art! We dive into topics like queer history and the overlap with art, the importance of art accessibility like street art, why art should challenge the artist AND the viewer, and the importance of visual storytelling.
Bio:
Natalie Simone (nicknamed “noot”) is a nonbinary, queer, and disabled mixed media artist. Their art explores feminism, gender, sexuality, sense of self, relationships, mental health, and other various avenues of self-expression drawn from the human experience. Natalie is also often inspired by music, movies, and other forms of media so they create a lot of fan art as well. They have an online store under the shop name Nootcreations and do local art markets when they are physically able to. They grew up in Massachusetts and graduated from Syracuse University with a BFA degree in Studio Arts as well as a minor in LGBT+ Studies.
This Podcast episode is available on these channels (in order alphabetical):
It gives us great pleasure to present Season 11, Episode 34: Julie Averill!
