Into a Darker Wilderness

Alexis Pauline Gumbs (she/her) is a Queer Black Troublemaker and Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all sentient beings.  Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice.  Her poetic work in response to the needs of her cherished communities has held space for multitudes in mourning and movement.  Alexis’s co-edited volume Revolutionary Mothering: Love on the Front Lines (PM Press, 2016) has shifted the conversation on mothering, parenting and queer transformation.  Alexis has transformed the scope of intellectual, creative and oracular writing with her triptych of experimental works published by Duke University Press (Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity in 2016, M Archive: After the End of the World  in 2018 and Dub: Finding Ceremony, 2020.)  Unlike most academic texts, Alexis’s work has inspired artists across form to create dance works, installation work, paintings, processionals, divination practices, operas, quilts and more.Alexis was a 2020-2021 National Humanities Center Fellow, funded by the Founders Award, and is a 2022 National Endowment of the Arts Creative Writing Fellow.  Her recent book Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (FSG) was awarded the ZORA (formerly the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award) in Non-fiction and the Judy Grahn prize in Lesbian Non-fiction by Publishing Triangle.  It was also named a Publisher’s Weekly Top 10 book of 2024, a Time Magazine must read book and was a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize and the LA Times Book Prize.Mentioned in this episode:Milkweed EditionsA Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, by Erin SharkeyAudre LordeSurvival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde, by Alexis Pauline GumbsThe LoftFall of the Berlin WallSt. CroixDagmar SchultzAudre Lorde — The Berlin YearsThe Feminist WireAisha Shahidah SimmonsDr. Heidi R. LewisToni Cade BambaraJamaicaAnguillaOraclesUndrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine MammalsThe Book of Kin: On Absence, Love, and Being There, by Jennifer Eli Bowen (Milkweed Editions, 2025)Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, by Chris La TrayPrompt for Writing and/or LivingFind a stone and turn it into a gift, whatever that means to you.

Carolyn Finney, PhD is a storyteller, author, and cultural geographer. A Fulbright Scholar, a Canon National Parks Science Scholar, and recipient of a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Studies, she has served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board, and has held positions at Wellesley College, the University of California, Berkeley , as well as the University of Kentucky. She was awarded the Alexander and Ilse Melamid Medal from the American Geographical Society. She has published pieces in BESIDE, The Guardian, and the New York Times and has essays published in the anthologies Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors (edited by Rue Mapp, November, 2022) and A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (edited by Erin Sharkey). Her first book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors, was released in 2014.Mentioned in this episode:Milkweed EditionsA Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, by Erin SharkeyThe Artist’s WayThe Acreage at OsceolaHorst RechelbacherPriscilla Solis YbarraHayden PlanetariumSylvia’sAn Inconvenient TruthLGBTQ culture in the PhilippinesBecoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home, by Chris La TrayPrompt for Writing and/or LivingWhat are the rules you imagine in a place that you’ve spent time in, that you’ve visited, but most importantly, in a place that you’ve loved?

Ronald L. Greer II is a writer and poet whose work appears in A Darker Wilderness: An Anthology of Black Nature Writing (Milkweed Press). His poems and stories have appeared in Doors Adjacent and Night Colors, among others. He’s the 2019 Pamela J. Caligiuri Broadside Award Winner and Co-editor of American Precariat: Parables of Exclusion, publishing in November 2023 (Coffee House Press). Greer spent his formative years in Detroit nurturing his grandfather’s urban garden.Mentioned in the episode:MCF-Moose LakeMinnesota Prison Writing Workshop (MPWW)Stillwater Writer’s CollectiveNature in DetroitPit bullsRattlesnakesSpider monkeysA Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions)Aster of Ceremonies, by JJJJJerome Ellis (Milkweed Editions) - Aster of Ceremonies (audiobook)

Guest: katie robinsonHosts: Erin Sharkey & Michael Kleber-DiggsRecorded in Minneapolis (Bde Óta Othúŋwe) on unceded Dakota land.= BOOKS DISCUSSED =The Negroes Send Their Love: Poems, Perspectives, and Possible Futures, by Sean Hill (Milkweed Editions, 2026)A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions 2023)Into a Darker Wilderness podcastSponsored by Milkweed EditionsProducer: Davi GraySound Editor: Claire Barnes= Guest Bio =Dr. Katie Robinson (any pronouns) is a writer, facilitator, scholar, and interdisciplinary artist devoted to the exploration of what is present and possible outside of the white supremacist colonial imagination. Their essay, "Here's How I Let Them Come Close," a meditation on encounters, extraterrestrials, and the creative process, was featured in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars from Milkweed in 2023. They recently completed a PhD at Pacifica Graduate Institute, where their dissertation, Toward a New Metaphysics of Political Struggle: Explorations into Abolitionist Subjectivites, explores abolitionist praxis as an ontological project — examining how Minneapolis-based abolitionists enact decolonial, relational worlds through creative anti-carceral practice amid escalating political violence.= Selected Topics Discussed =Kinetic ArtDavid ButlerExtraterrestrial conversationsAkashic recordsPoetic vs. academic writingNew epistemologies for social justice movementsEpisodic and nonbinary thinkingGrasshoppersWaspsNortheast MinneapolisLake Bde Maka SkaTarot and synchronicity

Guest: Sean HillHosts: Erin Sharkey & Michael Kleber-DiggsRecorded at Bemidji State UniversityThe Negroes Send Their Love: Poems, Perspectives, and Possible Futures, by Sean Hill (Milkweed Editions 2026)Dangerous Goods, by Sean Hill (Milkweed Editions 2014)Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, by Sean Hill (University of Georgia Press 2008)Aster of Ceremonies, by JJJJJerome Ellis (Milkweed Editions 2023)A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions 2023)Into a Darker Wilderness podcastProducer: Davi GraySound Editor: Claire BarnesGuest bioBorn and raised in Milledgeville, Georgia, Sean Hill is the author of the collection of poems, essays, and stories, The Negroes Send Their Love: Poems, Perspectives, and Possible Futures (Milkweed Editions, 2026), and two poetry collections, Dangerous Goods, awarded the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry, (Milkweed Editions, 2014) and Blood Ties & Brown Liquor, named one of the Ten Books All Georgians Should Read in 2015 by the Georgia Center for the Book, (UGA Press, 2008).Hill has received numerous awards including fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation, the Region 2 Arts Council, the Bush Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, The Jerome Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, the University of Wisconsin, a Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University, and a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.Hill’s poems and essays have appeared in Callaloo, Harvard Review, New England Review, Orion, Oxford American, Poetry, Tin House, and numerous other journals, and in nearly three dozen anthologies including Black Nature and Villanelles. His poems have also been featured as part of the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day series and on The Slowdown podcast when hosted by former U.S. Poet Laureate, Tracy K. Smith. And a volume of poems selected from Blood Ties & Brown Liquor and Dangerous Goods has been translated and published in Korean.Hill has served as the director of the Minnesota Northwoods Writers Conference at Bemidji State University since 2012. He is a consulting editor at Broadsided Press, a monthly broadside publisher. He has taught at several universities, including at the University of Alaska – Fairbanks and Georgia Southern University as an Assistant Professor. Hill lives with his family in southwest Montana and is an Associate Professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Montana.Topics mentioned:Bemidji State UniversityItasca State ParkMinnesota Northwoods Writers ConferenceIndigo GirlsUniversity of MontanaALCAN HighwayAustin DabneyLand GrantsOak trees (Quercus spp.)Paper birch (Betula papyrifera)Pagoda dogwood (Cornus alternifolia)Identifying treesBlue jay (Cyanocitta cristata)Bald eagle (Haliaeetus leucocephalus)Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus)Identifying birds