The Loft Podcast is back, with a season dedicated to our Fall 2018 theme: Fairy Tales. Our show today:

1. Minnesota slam poet Kyle Tran "Guante" Myhre reads "An Open Letter to Pinocchio from Dracula" from A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry. 

2. Fairy tale scholar Jack Zipes talks with us about the development of folklore and fairy tales, and what gives them such staying power.

3. Teaching artist Marjorie Hakala chats about how she plans to blend fairy tales and creative nonfiction in her Loft class this fall. Learn more about Marjorie's class here. 

4. Fiction writer Sequoia Nagamatsu talks about the fairy tales that influence his work, and reads "The Peach Boy" from his collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone.

More about our guests:

Kyle Tran "Guante" Myhre is a poet, MC, and activist based in Minneapolis.  His last project was the book A Love Song, A Death Rattle, A Battle Cry (Button Poetry), and his next project is an album-length collaboration with producer Big Cats called "War Balloons," which will be available September 18. His website is here.

Jack Zipes is a professor emeritus of the University of Minnesota and has published extensively on fairy tales and folklore. With Peter Brosius, he is the co-founder of Neighborhood Bridges, a storytelling program with the Children's Theatre Company. Stay up to date on Jack's publications here.

Marjorie Hakala is teaching this class at the Loft this fall. She has published nonfiction and criticism in The Millions, Rain Taxi, The Review Review, The Font, and Water~Stone Review, and she is also the author of a picture book, Mermaid Dance.

Sequoia Nagamatsu is the author of the story collection Where We Go When All We Were Is Gone (Black Lawrence Press), silver medal winner of the 2016 Foreword Reviews’ Indies Book of the Year Award and an Entropy Magazine Best Book of 2016. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Conjunctions, ZYZZYVA, The Fairy Tale Review, Tin House online, Black Warrior Review, Willow Springs, The Bellevue Literary Review, Lightspeed Magazine, and One World: A Global Anthology of Short Stories, among others. Originally from Hawaii and the San Francisco Bay Area, he was educated at Grinnell College and Southern Illinois University. He co-edits Psychopomp Magazine, an online quarterly dedicated to innovative prose, and teaches at St. Olaf College. He lives in the Twin Cities with his wife, the writer Cole Nagamatsu, and their cat, Kalahira. He is currently working on a second story collection and a novel. Visit his website here.

 This episode includes the following music:

"Climbing the Mountain" | Podington Bear

"Shooting Star" | Dexter Britain

"Sleep" | Daniel Birch

The Loft Podcast is produced by Rachel Yang, with support from Chris Jones and Melissa Wray.

Special thanks to Dale Connelly and KFAI Fresh Air Community Radio for production support and assistance with this episode. You can tune into KFAI at 90.3 FM Minneapolis and 106.7 FM St. Paul, and visit them online at kfai.org.