Episode Description:

In this two-part series, we celebrate our Pushcart Prize nominees. This episode features Amita Basu, Daniel Brennan, and Marie-Louise McGuinness. We asked each author to read an excerpt from their poetry or prose and to share some insights about their piece and themselves as writers. Elena, Mel, and Cerid also discuss what we loved about each piece and why we chose to nominate it. 

Featured Authors:

Amita Basu's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in over sixty magazines and anthologies including The Penn Review, Bamboo Ridge, Another Chicago Magazine, The Dalhousie Review, and Funicular. She’s a reader at The Metaworker, sustainability columnist and interviews editor at Mean Pepper Vine, and submissions editor at Fairfield Scribes Microfiction. She lives in Bangalore, uses her cognitive science PhD to work on sustainable behaviour, and blogs at http://amitabasu.com/

Nominated fiction: Retreat by Amita Basu on The Metaworker website 

Daniel Brennan (he/him) is a queer writer and resident of New York City, but spent much of his youth in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Pennsylvania (an early ecological inspiration for his work). As a member of the LGBTQIA+ community, Brennan hopes to capture and juxtapose the vastness we experience within our rapidly changing natural world with the often daunting intimacies the queer body presents. His poems have been published or are forthcoming in Passengers Journal, The Garfield Lake Review, ONE ART, and Feral: a Journal of Poetry & Art, among others. Instagram/Twitter @dannyjbrennan

Nominated poetry: The Beach by Daniel Brennan on The Metaworker website

Marie-Louise McGuinness comes from a wonderfully neurodiverse household in rural Northern Ireland. She has work published or forthcoming in Roi Faineant Press, Bending Genres, Intrepidus Ink, Flash Fiction Magazine and The Airgonaut amongst others. She enjoys writing from a sensory perspective.

Nominated creative non-fiction: Lives of Dust and Ashes by Marie-Louise McGuinness on The Metaworker website

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