Emerging Form: A Weekly Podcast
Hear the latest from “Emerging Form“, a weekly podcast about the creative process.
Join me and my co-host, the New York Times bestselling science writer Christie Aschwanden as we discuss creativity, usually over a glass of wine. Themes for season one include quitting, getting started, collaboration and existential despair. Guests for season one include poets and writers as well as a sketch artist, a songwriter, a winemaker and a circus performer.
Click any of the podcast titles below to be taken to the Emerging Form website where you can listen. Subscribe via iTunes or our RSS feed. Pease join in the discussion of creative process on our Facebook page!
Emerging Form
- Subscribe to our newsletter! May 30, 2019Now that our first season is wrapping up, we’re launching a newsletter to keep you posted on season 2 (coming in August) and to share little insights and ideas about creativity. Subscribe to get updates on new episodes, extras like bonus interviews and fun creativity-related links and announcements about Emerging Form events. We promise we […]emergingform
- Episode 9: How Should We Think About Awards & Contests? May 30, 2019Why should you enter a contest? Even if you don’t win, how might it help you? And what are downsides of entering? In this special episode, recorded live at the Telluride Lit Fest just before the announcement of the Fischer and Cantor Prizes, w talk about big juicy tomatoes, how judges make decisions, why the […]emergingform
- Episode 9 Bonus: Luis Lopez and Rafael Jesús González on Creative Process May 30, 2019In this bonus episode, Luis Lopez, poet laureate of Colorado’s Western Slope, and Rafael Jesús González, poet laureate of Berkeley, each read a poem and talk about their writing process. And that’s not all! Below, we present a poem Rafael Jesús González wrote about judging the Fischer poetry prize. We think his poem should be prerequisite […]emergingform
- Episode 8: Collaboration–Are We In This Together? (with guest Christine Laskowski) May 17, 2019Working with a partner on creative projects can be incredible! And incredibly frustrating. In this episode, we will discuss whether collaborations need leaders, why listening is an essential skill for working with other creatives, Chinese food, the Jabberwocky, and how spontaneity can enhance a creative collaboration. And then we’ll wrap up our conversation by talking with musician/songwriter/video […]emergingform
- Episode 7: Creative Habits (with guest Helen Fields) May 2, 2019What can you do to evolve your creativity? How do your practices fuel or sabotage your muse? In this episode of Emerging Form, we talk about creative habits—frequency, accountability, flexibility and more. We’ll cover Rosemerry’s four promises she makes for her daily practice, Christie’s philosophy on not taking yourself too seriously, a new approach for […]emergingform
- Episode 6: Quitting (with guest Pam Houston) April 18, 2019“Quitter” is sometimes an insult, but in this episode we explore how quitting can be underrated. Anyone involved in a creative project has likely wondered at some point if they should suck it up and continue the fight or move on. We’ll also discuss the dangers of the sunk cost fallacy, insights from Clue, the […]emergingform
- Episode 5: Feeback (with guest Andrea Jones-Rooy) April 4, 2019Who needs an editor? Everyone. In this episode, we discuss feedback: who to ask, how to ask them, and how to respond to what they say. Also important: at what point in a project do you ask for feedback? We’ll tackle all these questions, plus we’ll talk about the sinking of the Titanic, how praise […]emergingform
- Episode 4: Getting Started (with guest Judyth Hill) March 21, 2019What keeps us from getting started on our creative projects? We have great ideas, but then we keep putting them off. In this episode, we explore how to dance with high expectations and paralysis of analysis. We talk about tricks for getting yourself past square one, and we have an outrageously good interview with poet, […]emergingform
- Episode 3: Existential Despair (with guest Andrea Bird) March 8, 2019So you’re writing. Or painting. Or dancing. And you’re struck by this horrible feeling: what am I doing? How am I ever going to find the form and create something beautiful out of this tangled mess that I’ve assembled? Or you start to feel that your work doesn’t matter. That in fact, nothing matters. Your […]emergingform
- Episode 2: Is Talent Necessary? (with guest Jennifer Kahn) March 1, 2019If you’re a poet or a painter or a musician or a dancer, you have to have talent, right? Maybe, maybe not. In this episode of Emerging Form, we explore talent. What exactly is it? How do you know if you have it? Is it necessary? Can you make up for it if you don’t […]emergingform