Writing as a Force for Good - Reporting from AWP25

Alyssa Milano: Sorry Not Sorry

Peace By Peace Productions

Politics, News

3.6 • 3.5K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In late March, thousands of writers, publishers, students, and writing educators gathered in Los Angeles for the Association of Writers and Writing Programs annual conference. Since our own Ben Jackson is a writer and professor of composition, we thought it would be a great opportunity to hear how writing is changing the world for the better in a time when we desperately need to change the world for the better.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Melissa Milano, and this is Sorry Not Sorry. So you may notice that this week's episode sounds a little bit different than other episodes we've recorded.
0:41.0	And that's because we're doing this live at the Association of Writers and Writing Professionals Conference in Los Angeles.
0:46.9	Today I'll be talking to writers, educators, and publishers hearing what their role is in the New America
0:52.2	and what the role of writing and writing professionals
0:55.1	are of creation in resistance. So we're going to be talking about how words can change our cultures.
1:02.2	And so you'll hear a bunch of segments talking to a number of people and you'll hear a lot
1:07.2	from authors you can support and efforts that you can undertake to change our country.
1:16.9	So tell us your name and a little bit of the work that you do. Yeah, hi, my name is Matthew Kranak,
1:22.0	and I'm the executive editor of Consequence Forum. The organization started in 2008 and has been going strong ever since,
1:29.4	putting out anywhere from one to two journals a year. And we've recently expanded into writing
1:35.1	workshops. We have a substack, a newsletter, and we're an online forum also. So basically,
1:40.8	any way that we can get content out there that deals with the themes of
1:45.7	consequences of war, geopolitical violence, it's what we do. And why is that important right now?
1:50.8	Talking about consequences of war, geopolitical violence, political decisions, that kind of stuff.
1:56.0	Well, obviously, there's a lot as far as the geopolitical violence and war that's going on,
2:00.1	whether it be Russia or the
2:01.1	Middle East or any number of other places. And so having a platform for individuals to write about
2:06.9	that and readers to get exposed to these writings is essential. You know, not everything can be
2:12.4	communicated in a direct fashion says that journalism provides. The arts wonderfully provide a more oblique,
2:18.2	more kind of, I don't want to say sideways, but not such a head-on way of engaging with readers
2:23.9	and providing information about experiences. So being able to understand individuals' experiences
2:30.1	related to these conflicts in a way that maybe hits the heart more, maybe hits the gut more.
	...

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