Poet, acquisitions editor, and award winning professor, Micheline Maylor examines the craft of being a lifelong artist. Micheline discusses the importance of paying attention to what we are feeling, cross pollination of ideas, and breaking patterns. We also discuss being brave in your writing. Micheline says, "Bravery in writing is the thing that will take you far."

Micheline and I dive into her latest work, The Bad Wife, a brave, first-hand account of how to ruin a marriage. To those wanting to spark your creativity, this is the conversation for you.

About Micheline Maylor

 Poet, Acquisitions editor, Co-founder of the Freefall Literary Society, and award winning professor, Micheline Maylor is the author of five books of poetry - The Raymond Knister Poems, Whirr and Click, Little Wildheart, Drifting Like a Metaphor, and The Bad Wife. In 2016 Micheline was appointed as Calgary's first female poet laureate for a two year term.

Micheline is the acquisitions editor for Frontenac House Press and is the co-founder of the non-profit Freefall Literary Society where she was the editor in chief from 2006 to the present. She currently edits the Quartet poetry series for which the authors have been shortlisted or have won numerous awards including, The Goldie Award for best Lesbian poetry book in North America; The Gerald Lampert Award for best first book; The Pat Lowther Award for best book by a Canadian woman.

Micheline was the editor of the award winning This Wound is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt, which won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize, and the Most Significant Book of Poetry in English by an Emerging Indigenous Writer, and the Indigenous Voices Awards (2018). Micheline is a decorated professor specialising in creative writing and contemporary Canadian literature who has inspired countless students to write through the years.

Micheline Maylor’s newest collection, The Bad Wife, is an intimate, first-hand account of how to ruin a marriage. This is a story of divorce, love, and what should have been, told in a brave and unflinching voice. 

Connect with Micheline:

Web: http://michelinemaylor.com

Publications:

The Bad Wife

Drifting Like a Metaphor

Little Wildheart

Whirr and Click

When Natalie Meisner started her career in theatre, she was cast for roles that didn't represent the women she knew or the women she wanted to become. So Natalie started writing her own plays. In today's episode, poet, playwright, and professor Natalie Meisner discusses the importance of LGBTQ2S+ representation in all stories. Natalie shares how comedy can be a catalyst for social change and how her book, Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family, lifts the veil of silence around fertility and pregnancy while making us laugh at the same time.

About Dr. Natalie Meisner

Natalie Meisner is a playwright / poet from Nova Scotia, a full Prof at MRU, and Calgary’s 5th Poet Laureate. Her work deploys the power of comedy for social change.  Baddie One Shoe is a collection of odes to renegade women. Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story illuminates the life of the last Canadian jailed for homosexuality. Speed Dating For Sperm Donors was a hit at Lunchbox & Neptune. Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family topped non-fiction lists and My Mommy, My Mama, My Brother & Me is about a two-mom biracial family finding community.

Natalie holds a PhD from the University of Calgary in creative writing, an MFA in Creative Writing form the University of British Columbia. She is the recipient of the Annual Alberta Playwriting Competition, the Canadian National Playwriting Award, and the Lion Award for Advocacy and Awareness for Original Stage Play. Her forthcoming book, It Begins in Salt, is a collection of poems and love letters to those that share the tides of life. It urges us to love harder and give homage to those loved.

Natalie's Books: 

Baddie One Shoe (Frontenac House) 

Speed Dating For Sperm Donors (Playwright's Canada Press)

Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story (University of Calgary Press)

My Mommy, My Mama, My Brother & Me (Nimbus Publishing)

Double Pregnant: Two Lesbians Make a Family (Fernwood Publishing)

It Begins in Salt (Frontenac House) 

In the second episode of our two-part series, journalist, photographer, and AI researcher Leslie Salgado guides me step by step through AI ethics, ChatGPT, and parenting in the age of AI. Leslie explains, "Their world is going to be heavily influenced by AI… For me it's not about prohibiting or denying that reality. It's about educating them and educating ourselves." 

Leslie explores the need for ethics-driven AI, explaining,  "We need to go a step back and think of what triggers the innovation. What triggers those people to create a new tool, to create a new technology… Why are we creating this? For which purpose? Is it for sustainability? Is it for profitability?"

About Leslie Salgado

Journalist, photographer, and AI researcher Leslie Salgado is a Doctoral Student at the University of Calgary. Her current area of research includes Human-Centred AI, intersections between communication and AI ethical values, Online Trust and Safety, and Technology and Democracy. She is a former Public Communication Officer for UNESCO as well as a Broadcast Journalist for Canal Habana. Leslie worked as Professor at the Faculty of Communication at the University of Havana. Her recent solo photography exhibition entitled, Emotions Allowed, explores the range of human emotions. 

Connect with Leslie:

IG: @lesliebayamesa

Linkedin: Leslie Salgado Arzuaga

Resources: 

Globe and Mail, Opinion - ChatGPT has convinced users that it thinks like a person. Unlike humans, it has no sense of the real world:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-chatgpt-is-a-reverse-mechanical-turk/?login=true

Algorithmic Justice League - Unmasking AI harms and biases:
https://www.ajl.org

Algorithmic Justice League - How well do IBM, Microsoft, and Face++ AI services guess the gender of a face?
http://gendershades.org

PEW Research Center, 6 facts about America’s STEM workforce and those training for it:
https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/04/14/6-facts-about-americas-stem-workforce-and-those-training-for-it/

Statista, Software developer gender distribution worldwide as of 2022:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1126823/worldwide-developer-gender/