Something Rather Than Nothing

Alex Behr is the author of the story collections ANIMAL KINGDOM and PLANET GRIM, both on 7.13 Books, and the poetry chapbook GRIEF STICK, Picture Frame Press. Her writing has been published in Tin House, Epiphany, Salon, Oregon Humanities, The Rumpus, Buckman Journal, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, in anthologies, and others. She lives in Portland, OR, and plays piano and bass guitar.

She teaches writing workshops through Literary Arts.

This is Something Rather Than Nothing

Sophie Dunér is a singer, songwriter, composer, arranger and visual artist from Sweden who has lived and performed in the United States and Spain. Originally a jazz singer, her writing and performing have evolved into a unique style of wild, risky, passionate and exhilarating music for vocals and string quartet.

This is Something Rather Than Nothing

Lawrence Q. Markx was born on December 20th, 1980, in Miami, Florida—also known as Little America, or Cuba Adjacent, depending on your politics and GPS signal. From an early age, he challenged authority without getting expelled, mastering righteous mischief before most kids finished learning cursive.

His intellectual path began at Temple Beth Moshe Pre-School, where rhythm, ritual, and rebellion took root—thanks, in part, to a prophetic reading of “Bim-Bum, Bim-Biddy-Bum.” Identified as “gifted” in kindergarten—back when such aterm still implied distinction—he pursued advanced studies in foreign languages, computer science, marine biology, and psychological subversion before he could...

Di Slaney lives with her husband in a Grade II Listed, 400 year old farmhouse in Bilsthorpe, Nottinghamshire with more animals than is sensible. She runs Manor Farm Charitable Trust which offers a home for life for livestock, particularly elderly animals or those with special needs.  She operates an Egg Club to raise funds for the poultry and sells speciality yarn from the small flock of rare breed and rescued sheep under the name Hooligan Yarns.

Di has a degree in English and European Literature from the University of Warwick, an MA in Creative Writing from Nottingham Trent Unive...

Steven Seidenberg is an artist, poet, and philosopher whose collections of photographs include The Architecture of Silence (Contrasto, 2023), Pipevalve: Berlin (Lodima Press, 2017), and the forthcoming Kanazawa Vacancy (Chin Music, Fall 2026).  He has had solo exhibitions of his work in Japan, Italy, Germany, Mexico, and the United States. He is the author of Coda (Omnidawn, 2026), Anon (Omnidawn, 2022), plain sight (Roof Books, 2020), Situ (Black Sun Lit, 2018), Null Set (2016, Spooky Actions), Itch (2015, RAW ArT Press), and numerous chapbooks of poetry and aphorism. His books have been published in Swedish, Italian, and Portuguese translation.

This is Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast

Kazu Haga I have lived in Buddhist monasteries. I have spent the last twenty-five years in social justice movements. I have sat in hundreds of circles with incarcerated people witnessing them do the hard work of healing and accountability. And I have been humbled and inspired by my own, never-ending healing journey.

My work tries to bring all of my experiences together in a way that contributes to social change and collective liberation. Each day I find myself more committed to fighting injustice. And each day, I learn more that the fight for justice is not a...

Podcast Host Ken Volante here. I am pleased to present J Webster Sharp, who is my favorite, illustrator, like, ever.

Jemma has created The Scrapbook of Life and Death, Fondant, and an upcoming work on the super famous early 20th century actor Fatty Arbuckle. I can't even wait to lay my fingers on her Fatty book.

Here's an exclusive interview.

J Webster Sharp

This is Something Rather Than Nothing

Famous Painter Vanessa Stockard and her adventurer-space-mind-explorer-daughter Isobel tackle The Universe!

A Something Rather Than Nothing podcast exclusive

Swinewomb is a Southern Gothic psychosexual horror play set in the deeply religious town of Caleb’s Rest, where two siblings unravel in the aftermath of their parents’ deaths. As Shiloh spirals into a dangerous affair and begins hearing a voice that may be the devil’s, hysteria spreads through the community. The play blurs the line between piety and possession, asking where evil truly lives.

This episode features Reese Villella, Julia Ordway and Carter Williams.

Play opening details:

Venue: The West End Theatre, 263 W 86th St, New York, NY 10024 Dates: August 22 & 23, 2026

This...

Victor V. Gurbo is a roots revivalist singer-songwriter whose work blends folk, blues, and Americana into a sound that feels both timeless and contemporary.  Backed by a four-piece band, he delivers original songs anchored in storytelling and driven by raw, rhythmic energy.  His music draws inspiration from the canon of American song and poetry while maintaining a distinct, contemporary voice.  Whether performing in intimate venues or on larger stages, Gurbo brings an unfiltered intensity to his work.  With a deep respect for tradition and a forward-looking approach, he continues to carve out a unique space within today’s Americana landsc...

Guilt! is a clothing & video company founded in Portland, Oregon, by Jadon Allen.

Each creative work from the company draws inspiration from street art, life experiences, and collaboration. Dark themes are juxtaposed with unapologetically bold and colorful visuals.

The company recently relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, with a mission to continue expanding its creative endeavors and connect with new people.

New pieces release Fridays at 2:22 PM (PT) on GUILT and video services are available worldwide. DM @guiltpdx for more information!

Something Rather Than Nothing Podcast Website

Nox Sinister is hard to pin down into just one subgenre of heavy metal. They use a blend of techniques borrowed from NWOBHM, thrash, progressive, death and even power metal. The members of Sinister pride themselves on marrying aggression with theatricality, often using brutal thrashing riffs to tell complex stories with broad themes. Heavily inspired by the works of Shakespeare, dark fantasy, medieval history, comic book supervillains, and the world of horror movies, Nox Sinister seeks to create a new kind of sound and a new kind of live performance. Often using the phrase they have coined; "violent musical...

Listen to Something Rather Than Nothing one of the world's biggest indie podcasts!

Explore ways to creativity, paths to philosophy, ideas to transform and introductions to life's most fascinating creators.

Find dancers, painters, thinkers, musicians, esoteric conceptualists, physical contortionists, baseball stories, poets, s^xy movers and shakers, movie directors and, maybe, FIND YOURSELF!?

Website Here

Rachael Renae 

Rachael Renae is an artist, play enthusiast, and creativity hype gal based in Detroit, MI. She helps people prioritize play to overcome creative blocks, better connect with themselves and their people, and confidently live big, fulfilling lives. When  she’s not facilitating play workshops or co-hosting the Chaotic Creatives podcast, she’s likely gabbing with pals over voice notes and making a papier-mache project.

Something Rather Than Nothing Website

When a young influencer lands a dog food sponsorship, she recruits her estranged mother to co-star - hoping to turn a work obligation into a chance to reconnect. As she road-trips with her boyfriend toward the visit, anxiety builds while personal and professional pressures blur, culminating in a surreal unravelling. 

Interview with STAR Kenny Sale and Star Director MKL.

Raindance timely info for SHOWING Son June 23, 2026 

Matthew Kyle Levine page

kgmr is a composer, songwriter, keyboardist, field recorder, sampler, and noise maker. kgmr writes for solo piano, rock trio, larger ensembles, and electronic instrumentation. Her music has been used in films, theater, and radio. She appears elsewhere as a guest keyboardist.kgmr started writing and recording music in elementary school using a Casio keyboard, a Magnus organ, and a tape recorder. Her first compositions were imagined as soundtracks for horror films. Early sampling projects using prank phone calls and the tape recorder were unfortunately stopped by the police. As a child, she formally trained under Mlle. Yvonne Combe at...

Influenced by bands like Opeth and Cynic, Cryptic Divination is a unique "second generation" of sounds from '90s death metal to '70s prog rock. Utilizing heavy riffs, clean sections and screams, they embody a new wave of pacific-northwest progressive death metal.

April Fox has been teaching yoga in Portland OR since 2014, and running classes to doom metal since 2016. 

🌒Deep Dark Yoga 🌘 is slow, gentle flow to the sludgiest, heaviest tunes you can test your amps to. Great for beginners and “not into yoga” people — perfect for anyone interested in tuning on their mat with an epic soundtrack

Introduction to Lee Upton: I am a multi-genre author, not because I’m polygamous when it comes to genre, but because each genre is addictive and possibly a bit contagious. Along with The Withers and Tabitha, Get Up, I’ve written seven collections of poetry, two short story collections, a novella, four books of literary criticism, and an essay collection. My poetry has appeared widely, including in The New Yorker, Poetry, and Southern Review, as well as three editions of Best American Poetry. I am the recipient of the Pushcart Prize, Poetry Society of America awards, the Miami University Nove...

Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon, is a contemporary artist and filmmaker recognized around the world for her pioneering vision of public artwork. Through intimate portraits, immersive installations, and multi-year community based projects, she has spent over 20 years exploring the depths of human complexity, and asking how art can fundamentally re-envision the communities we live in towards a more just and equitable world.

She is best known as one of the first women Street Artists to gain international recognition in a male-dominated field, pushing its conceptual limits and paving the way for a generation of women Street Artists...

Darrin Doyle was born in Saginaw, Michigan. He has worked as a paperboy, a janitor, a mover, a telemarketer, a door-to-door salesman, a Kinko's Copy Consultant, a porn store clerk, a pizza delivery guy, a prep cook, a magazine store clerk, a technical writer, a freelance newspaper writer, an English teacher in Japan, and finally, a professor and an author.

​Darrin has a brown belt in Tae Kwon Do and wishes he had stuck with it a little longer to get the danged black belt.

Darrin hoards and plays lots of musical instruments: guitar, piano, dr...

Art Bar is a thick, coffee table Art Magazine, printed in the U.S. on high quality paper stock.

The features are about the lived human experiences of creatives and how they shape our artwork. We are aiming to fill a space in the art world, inspiring both established and emerging artists.

A proud powwow dancer, cultural educator, and fashion visionary, Keeli Littleleaf continues to blaze trails wherever she goes. Known for her signature high-step jingle and fringe style, she embodies power, healing, and movement through every step and every stitch.

As the founder of the Northwest/West Coast Indigenous Fashion show & Market and creator of AYAYAT, a fashion line inspired by her Indian name Ayayat Washasha — meaning “beautiful dancing” — Keeli weaves ancestral teachings into breathtaking couture that celebrates body positivity, inclusivity, and Indigenous elegance.

From walking NYC Fashion Week to designing for MMIP awareness with her powerful...

Stefan Diethelm is a Swiss and German artist, originally from Uzwil, Switzerland. He fell in love with performing at a young age, was trained in classical voice throughout his teens, and studied musical theatre in Hamburg, Germany. He moved to New York City to further his craft, and studied at the HB Studio under instructors like Lonny Price, Peter Francis James and Theresa McElwee. HB Studio is also where he met Eduardo Machado and started writing plays while in his class. Since graduating from the studio, he has been a working playwright, actor, producer, and director here in the...

Crystal Skillman is an internationally award-winning playwright, fictional podcast writer, and comic book author who has written for Stories Podcast (Wondery Kids), Girl Tales, Adventure Time comics, as well as Marvel comics. In addition to Open and The Rocket Men, Crystal is the dramatist of RAIN AND ZOE SAVE THE WORLD (premiered in the UK in 2022) and the NYTimes Critics’ Pick plays GEEK, CUT, and KING KIRBY which you can listen to on Broadway Podcast Network.

We talk about the big issues of history, war, justice and art. We focus on her new play 'The Rocket Men...

Patricia Lynn is a playwright/actor who has worked extensively in NYC independent theatre. As a writer, Patricia fancies herself to be a gothic feminist; she loves to subvert the classic genre by creating provocative plays inspired by traditional gothic stereotypes. Her plays have been developed at Triad Stage, New Perspectives Theatre Company, The Secret Theatre, Rogue Theater Festival, and Phillips’ Mill Community Association. As an actor, Patricia has worked at TheatreWorksUSA, Trinity Repertory Theatre, Soho Playhouse, Capital Fringe, NYC Fringe Festival, and many more. MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University; MFA in Acting from Brown University/Trinity Re...

Victoria Astuto is a musician, composer, videographer, and educator based in the Hudson Valley.  Her debut EP, The Place features clarinet, saxophone, flute, bass clarinet, synthesizers, and vocals to create dreamy, lush, and atmospheric textures.  The album is inspired by a cross country trip she took which influenced many of the themes ranging from loneliness to finding a place in the world to escaping a place you’re already in. Additionally, Victoria scores films for indie filmmakers in NYC, utilizing her large palette of instruments to create dense orchestration inspired by the works of Johnny Greenwood, Gerald Busby, and Bern...

Leanna Renee Hieber is an actress, playwright, ghost tour guide, audiobook narrator and the award-winning, bestselling author of over Gothic, Gaslamp Fantasy, Supernatural Suspense and Non-Fiction books for adults and teens with publishers such as Tor, Sourcebooks and Kensington Books. A Haunted History of Invisible Women: True Stories of America's Ghosts, co-authored with Andrea Janes, was a 2022 Bram Stoker Award finalist for "Superior Achievement in Non-Fiction". The book explores the intersection of women's history and ghost stories. America's Most Gothic: Haunted History Stranger than Fiction, releases 9/30/25 from Kensington.

Born on the East Coast, and home to the West, Blair Borax’s relationship with music began unexpectedly in 2016, when a friend gifted her a cheap guitar.

Since then, Borax has become a prolific songwriter, recording artist, and performer, known for her distinctive voice, captivating melodies, and thoughtful songwriting that taps into the heart of being human. Since she quit her day job in 2022, she has released two full length albums and played over 300 shows across the country.  

With more sophisticated songwriting, a newfound confidence in fingerpicking guitar, and a move towards dynamic acoustic folk pro...

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 "Be...

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 . . . 

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...

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!

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

This episode was recorded and captured LIVE on Independent Bookstore Day (April 26, 2025) from Browsers' Bookstore in Albany, Oregon. 

Pete Dryden:

Photographer, cabinet maker, professional overthinker. Hiding out in Albany, Oregon—dodging small talk, chasing meaning in the grain and the frame. Restless mind, calloused hands, too many questions and never enough quiet.

Abe Richmond:

Owner of Browsers’ Bookstore. If spotted in the wild, he is reading totally tubular titles.

We talk about bookstores, Edward Abbey, Kathy Acker, Morrissey, Hunter S. Thompson and so much more.

Celebrate Independent Books...

About Craig Randall - I've loved stories and literature and writing for as long as I can remember. For just as long, I've also struggled with anxiety and depression. They have loomed over me, all my life, threatening to steal away whatever hope and joy i've worked so hard to build.

All my work, the fiction and the poetry, was born out of this struggle as I worked to overcome and deal the hardships these struggles brought on.

There's so much to the story, which I will write about later. In the mean time, just...

Shippentower is named Co-Captain of the Oregon Ravens Football Team!

Kola Shippentower is an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation. She has co-founded and is the Director of The Wisáwca Project - Enough Iz Enough, a non-profit organization working together for change, for better communication and involvement.

Kola has developed a Safety Plan to be utilized by anyone in identifying safety methods, contacts, and procedures to keep one safe whether in an abusive relationship or a plan to track a missing person. She is a professional fighter a...

Meghan Lamb is the author of Mirror Translation (Blamage Books, 2025), COWARD (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022), Failure to Thrive (Apocalypse Party, 2021) All of Your Most Private Places (Spork Press, 2020) and Silk Flowers (Birds of Lace, 2017). Her work has also appeared in Quarterly West, DIAGRAM, Redivider, and Passages North, among other publications. She currently teaches creative writing through the University of Chicago, Story Studio, Hugo House, and GrubStreet. She is the fiction editor for Bridge Books and the nonfiction editor for Lover's Eye and Nat. Brut.

Music here