[Kate Schapira, practical matters]: How one act of inspiration (mixed with desperation) turned in to a book + dealing with climate anxiety Ep 1080

This week I'm talking with Kate Schapira, author of "Lessons from the Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth," which takes readers through the practical skills and emotional shifts needed to navigate our way to a more livable future.
Kate is also the author of six books of poetry, and her prose has appeared in The Rumpus, The Toast, and other places. She lives in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches nonfiction writing at Brown University. And fun fact about Kate, she has never met a tide pool that she didn't like.
In this episode we covered:
- How her grief over climate change inspired her to set up a table at a park in downtown Providence with a sign that said "Climate Anxiety Counseling Booth" and start talking to folks
- How that act of inspiration/desperation became a book
- The kinds of things people talked to her about at the booth
- Why she consciously chose NOT to pursue writing as a career path (it's her...side hustle? side passion that sometimes pays a little?)
- How to create a little more space when it feels like the walls of worry about the future are closing in
- The four-word mantra that helps her stay creative
- The genius (and new-to-me) concept of 'productive dissociation'
For full show notes, with links to everything Kate and I discuss, visit katehanley.substack.com. And to get each interview in one ad-free episode delivered straight to your inbox or podcast feed, visit katehanley.substack.com and become a paid subscriber.
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Finding the Throughline: Conversations about the Creative Process invites you into the minds of writers and other creatives as they open up about their process, their doubts, and what kinds of changes they’re thinking about making. The questions are mildly invasive, honestly, and the answers are unvarnished…and so refreshing!
Whether your creative work is writing, painting, making music, parenting, or simply living, Finding the Throughline can help you get—and stay—inspired. Invigorated, even.
For detailed show notes on each interview, visit katehanley.substack.com. And if you’d like to hear these interviews in one ad-free episode (as opposed to broken up into three shorter episodes with a few ads sprinkled in to keep the lights on), become a paid subscriber once you’re there.
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