Jesi Bender is an artist from Upstate New York.
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Her work leans towards experimental historical fiction that interrogates the tension between language's utility & malleability.

Jesi's gorgeous new book A Child of LIght is out now date-of-episode August 12, 2025!

Jen Michalski currently lives in Carlsbad, California. She graduated from St. Mary’s College of Maryland with a BA in English and received her MS in Professional Writing from Towson University. She was voted one of the best authors in Maryland by CBS News, one of "50 Women to Watch" by The Baltimore Sun, and "Best Writer" by Baltimore Magazine (Best of Baltimore issue, 2013).

Her new novel ALL THIS CAN BE TRUE was released by Turner/Keylight in June 2025. Her debut novel THE TIDE KING was published by Black Lawrence Press (2013; winner of the Big Moose Prize and "Best Fiction," Baltimore City Paper, 2013), and also her second novel, THE SUMMER SHE WAS UNDER WATER (Black Lawrence Press, December 2017). Her last novel, YOU'LL BE FINE, was a 2021 Buzzfeed "Best Small Press Book," a 2022 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Finalist, and was selected as one of the "Best Books We Read This Year" by the Independent Press Review. She is the author of three collections of fiction, CLOSE ENCOUNTERS (Dzanc Books, 2007) and FROM HERE (Aqueous Books, 2014), and THE COMPANY OF STRANGERS (Braddock Avenue Books, 2023), as well as a collection of novellas, COULD YOU BE WITH HER NOW (Dzanc Books, 2013). She also edited the anthology CITY SAGES: BALTIMORE (CityLit Press 2010), which Baltimore Magazine called "Best of Baltimore" in 2010.

Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast

Ophelia Darkly is a DJ, model, writer, performer, and Doll Tarot reader based out of Portland, Oregon. Magic, dreams, and storytelling are the threads that bind all of her creative ventures together. She believes that art, in all its forms, is one of the most sacred forces of the universe.

Enjoy this wonderful conversation with Ophelia and the many magickal places she takes us . . .

Episode 301 of The Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast! SRTN Website

Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast Episode 300!!! We talk ABOLITION.

Calvin John Smiley, Ph.D. is an associate professor of sociology at Hunter College-CUNY. His research and scholarship broadly focus on issues related to justice, inequality, and race. Smiley is the co-editor of Prisoner Reentry in the 21st Century: Critical Perspectives of Coming Home (Routledge, 2020). He is the author of the award-winning Purgatory Citizenship: Reentry, Race, and Abolition (University of California Press, 2023), which explores how system-impacted individuals navigate and negotiate the reentry experience with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas. Further, he is the author of Defund: Conversations Towards Abolition (Haymarket Books, 2024), which considers how #defund can bridge the divide between reform and abolition, becoming a catalyst to help organizers realize abolitionist visions. Finally, Smiley has published in an array of peer-reviewed journals and public outlets.

Beyond his academic work, Smiley is committed to public sociology and praxis. He has been a regular contributor to several news and talk show outlets. Additionally, he is the founder and director of Till Everything Better LLC, which works with system-impacted youth through restorative justice practices within New York City youth detention facilities. Finally, Smiley is the Project Director for the CUNY New Paths and Administration of Children’s Services (ACS) program to offer system-impacted youth college-credit courses.

Katie Marie is a Cherokee/Choctaw educator, Indigenous Wisdomkeeper, and decolonial guide who works at the intersection of healing, community, and education.

Enjoy this ranging conversation into matriarchy, wellness of being, Indigenous futures, our planet, Art & Philosophy!

Something Rather than Nothing

Annabel McConnachie (she/her) is an actress, writer, singer, dancer and content creator. She is originally from Sydney, Australia but is currently based in New York City. She is best known for her work in the critically acclaimed miniseries 'IKEA Heights - The Next Generation'.

Her much anticipated new play 'Archive of My Own' made its stage debut in a moved reading at the Tank.

THANKS FOR LISTENING!

Sophia Hembeck is a bilingual writer and artist based in Edinburgh. She has published three books (Things I Have Noticed, 2020 & Things I Have Loved, 2023 & Thiings That Are Different Now, 2025) which are compromised of her essays and short prose as well as artwork that she specifically created for the books. They are part of her poetic-memoir trilogy." She’s a fierce advocate for literary essays and teaches essay writing classes for writers of all levels.

You can buy her books here.

Instagram: @sophiahembeck