Awakeners

On this episode of Awakeners, Lena speaks with the poets Gabrielle Bates and Keetje Kuipers, who met when Gabby enrolled in Keetje’s poetry class at Auburn University in Alabama almost thirteen years ago. According to Gabby, she thought all poets were dead, so Keetje’s class was a revelation. They read Richard Siken, Terrance Hayes, A.E. Stallings, and Dorianne Laux, Keetje’s own mentor. They began corresponding about poems, and when Keetje later left her tenure-track job to move to Seattle, where Gabby was living after her MFA (and still is), they formed a writing group with a few other local poetesses, to crib Gabby’s word, and became something more like peers. 

We joke in this episode that Keetje is Gabby’s personal archivist: she came prepared with poems from the first packet Gabby ever sent seeking feedback, as well as an email exchange from 2014 and an introduction Keetje wrote for one of Gabby’s readings from the same year. In the second half of the episode, we get to hear excerpts from all three, and Gabby and Keetje read aloud several poems from their most recent books, JUDAS GOAT and LONELY WOMEN MAKE GOOD LOVERS. 

We track some wonderfully eerie resonances across their work, including encounters with animals, patriarchal violence, the general attraction to discomfort, the contrast between ‘now’ and ‘then,’ dialogue with other women, and poem endings that ask new questions. We discuss why it’s empowering to write while housesitting and what the difference might be between the "scariest thing” in a poem and its “heart.” And reader: we all cry a little bit.

Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023; the87press, 2025), an NPR Best Book of 2023 and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and serves occasionally as visiting faculty for the University of Washington Rome Center and the Tin House Writers' Workshops. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Believer, Sewanee Review, American Poetry Review, and Ploughshares. 

Keetje Kuipers’ fourth collection of poems is Lonely Women Make Good Lovers. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and her poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. She lives in Montana and is Editor of Poetry Northwest.

More Gabby: https://www.gabriellebat.es/

More Keetje: https://keetjekuipers.com/

Mentioned in the episode:

Dorianne Laux and Garret Hongo (sp?)

Paisley Rekdal

Camille Dungy

Crush by Richard Siken

Chantel Acevedo

Bob Wrigley

Corrie Williamson

Tracy K. Smith

On this episode of Awakeners, Lena speaks with the poets Gabrielle Bates and Keetje Kuipers, who met when Gabby enrolled in Keetje’s poetry class at Auburn University in Alabama almost thirteen years ago. According to Gabby, she thought all poets were dead, so Keetje’s class was a revelation. They read Richard Siken, Terrance Hayes, A.E. Stallings, and Dorianne Laux, Keetje’s own mentor. They began corresponding about poems, and when Keetje later left her tenure-track job to move to Seattle, where Gabby was living after her MFA (and still is), they formed a writing group with a few other local poetesses, to crib Gabby’s word, and became something more like peers. 

We joke in this episode that Keetje is Gabby’s personal archivist: she came prepared with poems from the first packet Gabby ever sent seeking feedback, as well as an email exchange from 2014 and an introduction Keetje wrote for one of Gabby’s readings from the same year. In the second half of the episode, we get to hear excerpts from all three, and Gabby and Keetje read aloud several poems from their most recent books, JUDAS GOAT and LONELY WOMEN MAKE GOOD LOVERS. 

We track some wonderfully eerie resonances across their work, including encounters with animals, patriarchal violence, the general attraction to discomfort, the contrast between ‘now’ and ‘then,’ dialogue with other women, and poem endings that ask new questions. We discuss why it’s empowering to write while housesitting and what the difference might be between the "scariest thing” in a poem and its “heart.” And reader: we all cry a little bit.

Gabrielle Bates is the author of Judas Goat (Tin House, 2023; the87press, 2025), an NPR Best Book of 2023 and finalist for the Washington State Book Award. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, she currently lives in Seattle, where she works for Open Books: A Poem Emporium, co-hosts the podcast The Poet Salon, and serves occasionally as visiting faculty for the University of Washington Rome Center and the Tin House Writers' Workshops. Her poems have appeared in the New Yorker, the Believer, Sewanee Review, American Poetry Review, and Ploughshares. 

Keetje Kuipers’ fourth collection of poems is Lonely Women Make Good Lovers. She is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and her poems have appeared in the Pushcart Prize and Best American Poetry anthologies. She lives in Montana and is Editor of Poetry Northwest.

More Gabby: https://www.gabriellebat.es/

More Keetje: https://keetjekuipers.com/

Mentioned in the episode:

Dorianne Laux and Garret Hongo (sp?)

Paisley Rekdal

Camille Dungy

Crush by Richard Siken

Chantel Acevedo

Bob Wrigley

Corrie Williamson

Tracy K. Smith
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of Awakeners, Lena speaks with the nonfiction writers Tajja Isen and Nicole Chung, who became colleagues and friends after working together on an essay for Catapult, a (now sadly shuttered) digital magazine where Nicole served as editor. After collaborating to publish Tajja’s essay, Nicole brought Tajja onto the magazine’s editorial staff, and eventually Tajja succeeded Nicole as Editor in Chief.

In the first half of the episode, Tajja and Nicole read aloud from their first email exchange, including Tajja’s pitch and Nicole’s feedback. We get into the nitty gritty of what this kind of editorial back-and-forth looks like—including the time Tajja took between drafts—and discuss how their mutual admiration as writer and editor grew into an enduring friendship (and how Nicole knew Tajja would make a good editor after seeing her revise her own work). 

In the second half of the episode, we discuss how writing and editing feed one another, and how Tajja and Nicole have maintained their identities as writers alongside their identities as editors and champions of other writers’ work. We end with a peek into the thinking behind Tajja’s next book, Tough Love, a memoir about mentorship, control, desire, and the anxiety of influence.

Nicole Chung is the author of the award-winning memoir A Living Remedy, which was named a Notable Book by The New York Times and a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen other outlets. Her 2018 debut All You Can Ever Know was a national bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Chung has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Slate, and many other publications.

Tajja Isen is the author of the essay collection Some of My Best Friends, named a Best Book of the Year by outlets including Electric Literature and The Globe and Mail. She is a contributing writer for The Walrus, for which she received an honorable mention at the 2024 National Magazine Awards. Her work has been recognized with fellowships from the Black Mountain Institute, the Ucross Foundation, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She also edits for Orion magazine and works as a cartoon voice actor. Her next book, Tough Love, is a memoir of mentorship.

More Nicole: nicolechung.net

More Tajja: tajjaisen.com

Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com.

Mentioned in the episode:

Catapult (RIP)

Periplus Fellowship

Yuka Igarashi, Editor at Graywolf

Jess Zimmerman at Electric Lit

Gordon Lisch

Elizabeth Hardwick
See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

On this episode of Awakeners, Lena speaks with the nonfiction writers Tajja Isen and Nicole Chung, who became colleagues and friends after working together on an essay for Catapult, a (now sadly shuttered) digital magazine where Nicole served as editor. After collaborating to publish Tajja’s essay, Nicole brought Tajja onto the magazine’s editorial staff, and eventually Tajja succeeded Nicole as Editor in Chief.

In the first half of the episode, Tajja and Nicole read aloud from their first email exchange, including Tajja’s pitch and Nicole’s feedback. We get into the nitty gritty of what this kind of editorial back-and-forth looks like—including the time Tajja took between drafts—and discuss how their mutual admiration as writer and editor grew into an enduring friendship (and how Nicole knew Tajja would make a good editor after seeing her revise her own work). 

In the second half of the episode, we discuss how writing and editing feed one another, and how Tajja and Nicole have maintained their identities as writers alongside their identities as editors and champions of other writers’ work. We end with a peek into the thinking behind Tajja’s next book, Tough Love, a memoir about mentorship, control, desire, and the anxiety of influence.

Nicole Chung is the author of the award-winning memoir A Living Remedy, which was named a Notable Book by The New York Times and a Best Book of the Year by over a dozen other outlets. Her 2018 debut All You Can Ever Know was a national bestseller and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Chung has written for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Time, Esquire, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Slate, and many other publications.

Tajja Isen is the author of the essay collection Some of My Best Friends, named a Best Book of the Year by outlets including Electric Literature and The Globe and Mail. She is a contributing writer for The Walrus, for which she received an honorable mention at the 2024 National Magazine Awards. Her work has been recognized with fellowships from the Black Mountain Institute, the Ucross Foundation, and the Sewanee Writers' Conference. She also edits for Orion magazine and works as a cartoon voice actor. Her next book, Tough Love, is a memoir of mentorship.

More Nicole: nicolechung.net

More Tajja: tajjaisen.com

Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com.

Mentioned in the episode:

Catapult (RIP)

Periplus Fellowship

Yuka Igarashi, Editor at Graywolf

Jess Zimmerman at Electric Lit

Gordon Lisch

Elizabeth Hardwick

On this episode of Awakeners, Lena speaks with the poets Carl Phillips and Aditi Machado, who met through the MFA program at Washington University in St. Louis when Aditi began as a student almost fifteen years ago.

Growing up in India, Aditi wasn’t exposed to much American poetry. Carl could tell, reading her work, that this was a singular voice—he even remembers thinking to himself that Aditi’s style made him want to reconsider his own approach. 

In the first half of the episode, we discuss what surprised Carl about Aditi’s work, how Carl’s experience as a high school Latin teacher informed his pedagogy, and what Aditi remembers from her time as Carl’s student (and has borrowed, now that she’s a professor herself). We also discuss what Carl prioritized as the judge for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize, the oldest annual literary award in the U.S. And as a bonus, Aditi shares an excerpt from a hilarious and enthusiastic journal entry she wrote after one of her early meetings with Carl to discuss her work.

In the second half of the episode, we hear poems from their newest books, Aditi’s “Concerning Matters Culinary” from Material Witness and Carl’s “Fist and Palm” from Scattered Snows, to the North. We discuss their radically different approaches to form and process, what it means to get “personal” in their poetry, and their shared interest in the agency of the natural world, a subtle materialism that thrums through both collections. (In other words: Lena makes the argument that their work isn’t as different as it seems.)

Aditi Machado is a poet, translator, and essayist. Her publications include three poetry collections from Nightboat, Material Witness (2024), Emporium (2020), and Some Beheadings (2017); two book-length translations from the French, Baptiste Gaillard’s In the Realm of Motes (Roof, 2025) and Farid Tali’s Prosopopoeia (Action, 2016); and several chapbooks. Her work appears or is forthcoming in journals like BOMB, Chicago Review, Fence, jubilat, Lana Turner, Volt, and Western Humanities Review, among others. A recipient of the James Laughlin and The Believer Poetry Awards, she serves as an advisory poetry editor for The Paris Review and teaches at the University of Cincinnati.

Carl Phillips is the author of many books of poetry, including Scattered Snows, to the North and Then the War: And Selected Poems, 2007–2020, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. He lives on Cape Cod in Massachusetts.

More Aditi: aditimachado.com

More Carl: https://www.carlphillipspoet.com/

Subscribe and connect with us on our website: awakenerspodcast.com.

Read Carl’s poem “Fist and Palm”: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/poems/158812/fist-and-palm

Mentioned in the episode:

Martín Espada

Alan Dugan

Mary Jo Bang

Jorie Graham

John Ashbery

Johannes Jorgensen, Transgressive Circulation

Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Rosemary Walddrop, The Reproduction of Profiles

Gerard Manley Hopkins