Introduction to Lee Upton: [https://regalhousepublishing.com/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 Novella Prize, the Saturnalia Book Prize, and other honors. For over three decades I taught at Lafayette College, where I assumed the title Francis A. March Professor Emerita of English and Writer in Residence when I stepped away from teaching to write full time.

Lee Upton

Caledonia Curry, known as Swoon [https://swoonstudio.org/about], 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. As a classically trained printmaker, she has innovated new approaches to create large-scale relief prints and intricate papercut works. The deep consideration of form is inseparable from Curry’s vision of the transformative role of public art in communities. Her critical engagement with issues of social and environmental justice have positioned her at the forefront of the emergent discourse around socially-engaged art practices. Her commitment to expanding the possibilities of art to repair trauma and foster personal and collective healing continues to drive her substantial contributions to contemporary art through her work with portraiture, sculpture, installation and most recently, stop-motion animation.

This is Something Rather Than Nothing [https://www.somethingratherthannothing.com/]

SWOON, Caledonia Curry

Darrin Doyle [https://www.darrindoyle.com/] 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, drums, mandolin, banjo, bass, ukelele, and a diatonic 4-string stick dulcimer [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FshiDVafecI].

He lives in Mount Pleasant, Michigan and teaches at Central Michigan University.

He knows what skeletons do.

This is something rather than nothing [https://www.somethingratherthannothing.com/]

Darrin Doyle

Art Bar [https://www.artbarmagazine.com/] 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.

ART BAR Magazine 

A proud powwow dancer, cultural educator, and fashion visionary, Keeli Littleleaf [https://www.facebook.com/search/top?q=keeli%20littleleaf]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 Medicine Ledger Dress, Keeli’s artistry moves with purpose and passion. She is the heartbeat of a new generation — where fashion becomes ceremony and storytelling becomes medicine.

Something Rather than Nothing [https://www.somethingratherthannothing.com/] Podcast is an international show focuses on art, philosophy and liberation



Keeli Littleleaf

Stefan Diethelm [https://stefandiethelm.com/about] 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 city.

He has acted on various stages, from Off- and Off-Off-Broadway to Switzerland and Germany, and his plays have been performed in a variety of theaters and festivals in New York and beyond, garnering positive national and international reviews.

His biggest influences as a playwright include Sarah Kane, Samuel Beckett, Adrienne Kennedy and the European classics. He aims to create original, human art for our commercialized times.

Bradly Valenzuela [https://www.bradlyvalenzuela.com/bio] is a New York City based director, playwright and producer. He is originally from Rocklin, California and attended university in Southern California at California State University, Fullerton. He graduated with a BA in Theatre with an Emphasis in Directing. Bradly is a recipient of the Honorable Mention Directing Award for Region 8 of the Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival. For the past 5 years, he has worked within many theater companies such as Bated Breath Theatre Company, Mabou Mines and Theatre for the New City. He also has worked in multiple festivals, including the Rogue Theater Festival and the New York Theater Festival.

Along with collaborating in these given spaces, Bradly shows continued commitment to workshopping and developing new works, both as a director, playwright and as a producer, being responsible for 6 debuts in the last 2 years.

This is Something Rather Than Nothing [https://www.somethingratherthannothing.com/]

'Connoly' with Stefan Diethelm and Bradly Valenzuela

Crystal Skillman [https://www.crystalskillman.com/] 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.' The Rocket Men is a unique theatrical experience that carries us through time in a blink of an eye to present the story of the German "Rocket Men" who used their scientific skills to flee Nazi Germany and settle in the most unlikely of places...North Alabama. These men form the backbone of NASA’s rocketry program.

In this modern play, women (employees at Space Camp), step into roles playing the men focusing on Heinz- Hermann Koelle, a lesser-known young German rocketeer, who joined this "Operation Paperclip" team years later; Rocket Men explores the dynamic relationship of Wernher von Braun and Koelle as these two have set their sights on getting us to the Moon and beyond.

But as the play counts down to the launch of Apollo 11, Koelle is befriended by a Jewish engineer hell-bent on exposing the truth: the Germans' technology is based on the V-2 rockets built by slave labor.

Played by six female-identifying women who force us to theatrically re-examine this explosive story - still widely not known in America - “The Rocket Men” asks who gets to be remembered in the history books, and why?

Crystal Skillman

Patricia Lynn [https://www.patriciamlynn.com/] 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 Repertory. 

In this episode we talk about her new play The Truth about Transylvania debuting during Halloween week October 24, 2025.

Patricia Lynn

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 Bernard Herrmann. You can find her album and music videos on YouTube, Tidal, Apple Music, Spotify, and Band Camp.

Band Camp [https://victoriaastuto.bandcamp.com/album/the-place]

Spotify [https://open.spotify.com/album/1Szbfx5xiWxWOq2dLyMrLM?si=bF8rQh8QQJqRuLcHKj0org]

Tidal [http://www.tidal.com/album/445223885]

Apple Music [https://geo.music.apple.com/album/the-place/1823740295]

YouTube [https://youtube.com/@victoriaastuto5043?si=mjwnR7P9JcMbU4Ar]

SRTN Podcast [https://www.somethingratherthannothing.com/]

Victoria Astuto

Leanna Renee Hieber [https://www.leannareneehieber.com/about-1/] 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.

This is Something Rather than Nothing [https://www.somethingratherthannothing.com/]. . . 

Leanna Renee Hieber

Why is there something rather than nothing? This podcast is a philosophical and psychological exploration into the act of creation (poets, musicians, writers, painters, thinkers, all of us) by: Ken Volante

Something (rather than nothing)