Commonplace Podcast

Raised in Brooklyn, NY, Sabrina Orah Mark earned a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University. She also earned an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and a PhD in English from the University of Georgia. She is the author of the poetry collectionsTsim Tsum,and The Babies. Her collection of stories,Wild Milk,won the Georgia Author of the Year Award for Short Story and was a finalist for the Townsend Prize for Fiction.
Mark’s accomplishments include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, a fellowship from the Fine Arts Work Center, and a Creative Capital Award. In addition to teaching private workshops she currently teaches nonfiction, fiction, and poetry for the Bennington Writing Seminars. She lives in Athens, Georgia, with her husband, Reginald McKnight, and their two sons.
Books by Sabrina Orah Mark:
Happily (Random House, 2023)
Wild Milk (Dorothy, 2018)
The Babies (Saturnalia, 2004)
Tsim Tsum (Saturnalia, 2009)
Also Mentioned:
Episode 33: Sabrina Orah Mark
Nadja Speigleman
Bruno Schultz’s fairytale murals
“Borges and I” by Jorges Louis Borges
Grimm’s fairytales
Lidia Yuknavitch
Bella Baxter
The Golden Key
Angela Carter
“The Aleph” by Jorge Luis Borges
Reading with Rachel (2024-2025 cycle)

The New York-based photographer Lois Conner has been traveling the world with a 7x17” banquet camera for nearly half a century. Through the elongated format of her work she has explored the landscape and the temper of our times; her art is both contemporary and, due to her vision, ‘a long view’ that captures the eternal in the moment, timeless. Conner’s work is that of the artist-artisan: every aspect of her art involves the hand made combined with demanding techniques of platinum printing. In recent years she has employed digital technologies to expand the format of her work, embracing landscapes from the natural to the man-made. Her annual trips to China since 1984 have allowed her to follow the transformation of the People’s Republic and to share her unique understanding of the country’s changing urban and rural mien, as well as the vistas that inspired the country’s unique culture.
Conner has been based in New York City since 1971, where she worked for the United Nations until 1984. During that time she was awarded a Bachelor in Fine Arts (photography) from the Pratt Institute and a Master’s degree from Yale University. Conner has also taught photography at many places, including over a decade as professor of photography at Yale University.
For a list of Lois Conner’s publications and exhibitions please visit her website.

Eugenia Leigh is a Korean American poet and the author of Bianca (Four Way Books, 2023) and Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books, 2014). Her poems and essays have appeared in numerous publications including TIME, The Nation, Poetry, Ploughshares,Waxwing, and the Best of the Net anthology. Eugenia serves as a Poetry Editor at The Adroit Journal and as Valentines Editor at Honey Literary.
Books by Eugenia Leigh:
Bianca (Four Way Books, 2023)
Blood, Sparrows and Sparrows (Four Way Books 2014)
Also Mentioned:
Hey It’s Me podcast (with Mike Sakasagawa and Rachel Zucker)
Eugenia Leigh’s on the Zuihitsu
Black Lives Matter
Alan Shapiro
Hybrida by Tina Chang
The Undertaker’s Daughter by Toi Derricotte
The Zuihitsu Form
Franny Choi
Confessional Poetry
Bri Gonzalez
Jessica Nirvana Ram
Odes to Lithium by Shira Erlichman
Lorca’s Duende
2024 AWP Panel on Mental Illness: Danez Smith, Leila Chatti, Stevie Edwards, Marlin M. Jenkins
John Murillo’s “Upon Reading That Eric Dolphy Transcribed Even the Calls of Certain Species of Birds,”
Carrie Fountain’s “The Jungle”
Rachel Zucker’s SoundMachine
Keith S Wilson
Vanessa Angélica Villarreal
Eduardo Corral’s Slow Lightning
Mai Der Vang & her book, Yellow Rain
Visual Poem by Keith S. Wilson
Time Travel by James Gleick
Carlo Rovelli’s The Order of Time
Brian Greene
Hafizah Geter’s The Black Period
Nicole Sealey’s The Ferguson Report
Donate to Brooklyn Poets

Mike Sakasegawa is a writer, photographer, book artist, and the host of the arts and literature podcast Keep the Channel Open, and the short fiction podcast LikeWise Fiction.
His writing has appeared in Last Exit, Catapult, PetaPixel, and Don’t Take Pictures Magazine.
His photographs have been featured on Lenscratch, A Photo Editor, and SD Voyager, and included in several group exhibitions. Originally from California’s Central Coast, he now lives in San Diego with his family.
Rachel Zucker is the author of The Poetics of Wrongness, SoundMachine, The Pedestrians, MOTHERs, Museum of Accidents, The Bad Wife Handbook, The Last Clear Narrative, Eating in the Underworld, and with Arielle Greenberg, Home/Birth: A Poemic, Starting Today: 100 Poems for Obama’s First 100 Days and Women Poets on Mentorship.
She is mother to three sons, founder and host of the Commonplace podcast, directrix of The Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics, and teaches poetry at NYU and other places.