Serenbe Stories

Daren Wang Creates Community Around The Arts

June 29, 2020 Serenbe / Daren Wang Season 3 Episode 9
Serenbe Stories
Daren Wang Creates Community Around The Arts
Show Notes Transcript

Today's episode of Serenbe Stories features Daren Wang, Founder of the Decatur Book Festival, which one of the largest festivals in the country.  In this episode he shares how his love of music brought him to Atlanta, how he started the Decatur Book Festival, the artist residency selection process, and his vision for the future of the arts. He and Steve Nygren even make plans to put those dreams in motion! We hope you enjoy this episode of Serenbe Stories.

Mentioned In The Episode

The Hidden Light of Northern Fires

Verb Literary Magazine

Monica Olsen(1s):
Hey guys, it's Monica here. I wanted to tell you about a new podcast that I've started with my very good friend, Jennifer Walsh called biophilic solutions. Our last season of ceremony stories, building a biophilic movement was so popular that we decided to dedicate an entire podcast to it every other week. Jennifer and I will sit down with leaders in the growing field of biophilia. We'll talk about local and global solutions to help nurture their living social and economic systems that we all need to sustain future generations more often than not. Nature has the answers. You can find biophilic solutions on apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe and follow us today. So you don't miss an episode.

Monica Olsen (41s):
All right, now let's get back to serenbe Stories. serenbe is a place where people live, work, learn, and play in celebration of life speedy. And we're here to share the stories that connect residents and guests to each other and to nature. This is Serenbe stories>

Monica Olsen (1m 23s):
Today's episode of savvy stories. We feature Daren Wang, executive director of the artist residency program at air Serenbe and founder of the Decatur book festival, which is one of the largest festivals in the country. The air residency program typically supports over 30 artists per year, but since the pandemic started, Darren had to think on his feet to continue supporting artists and promoting their work. Since they couldn't be onsite. These past statements. In this episode, he shares how his love of music brought him to Atlanta, how he started the Decatur book festival, the artist, residency selection process, and his vision for the future of the arts at ceremony. He and Steve Nygren even make plans to put those dreams in motion. We hope you enjoy this episode of serenbe stories,

Monica Olsen (2m 4s):
But first serenbe stories is brought to you by the, in it serenbe. The Inn is nestled in the rolling countryside, a bucolic ceremony where guests can walk on the 15 miles of trails through preserve forest land, the wildflower meadow, and the animal village. You can relax by the pool hot tub or in rocking chairs on the wraparound porch, play on the croquet lawn swings and in-ground trampolines connect with nature and each other all while staying in luxurious rooms on the in in-ground or within the community of Seren, be book your stay today@serenbeinn.com. I want to welcome

Monica Olsen (2m 34s):
Everybody back to serenbe stories. Today. We have Daren Wang. Who's our executive director of our artist in residence program, known as air Daren has been around Atlanta for a number of years. He grew up in Buffalo, New York, and then moved to Atlanta in 89. He is probably most well-known for starting the Decatur book festival. And I'm hoping to talk to him about that today, as well as he was recruited to the air program. And also recently released a novel that we're going to talk about a little bit. That's a historical fiction in the south during the civil war. So welcome Daren. It's so good to have you. ,

Daren Wang (3m 10s):
I'm really excited to be here and keep in good company. 

Steve Nygren:
look forward to the conversation, Darren.

Monica Olsen (3m 18s):
Yeah. So Darren, you know, one of the things I'm really interested about, I do not know the story of how you came to be the executive director of air. So a little bit of how you sort of how you got recruited and came into our world that way.

Daren Wang (3m 36s):
Well, what happened was I had been running the Decatur book festival at least for many years, and there was a kind of an active partnership between air Sarah, Andy and the book festival. And we, we featured artists from, from the program at the festival, I think every year for three or four years while I was there. And I think continuing to run that way. And during that, so in that process, I got to know Brandon, and it was the founder kind of the founding executive director of, of air and the program. I got to know the program pretty well. And Brandon asked me to join the national advisors committee, which kind of oversees the artistic aspect of air Serenbe.

Daren Wang(4m 20s):
So they would to select the artists to evaluate applications and so on. So, and they also have a lot of fun. The, the national advisors council has, has a really great weekend. That's there at the end inn November and we get to, so I, I, I used to come down for that fairly often and I'd come down and visit just to see Brandon and see, spend time around Serenbe. And the, just because I could, I had an excuse then. So after I stepped away from the festival and Brandon, Brandon stepped away from air Janice Spartan, who is the heart and soul of air serenbe. And she, she reached out and asked if I would think about joining the board, moving up from the national advisor council up to the, the board.

Daren Wang (5m 8s):
So I met with, with Janice, I think last August, and we talked about it. And then we had, we had a meeting scheduled to sit down and confirm it. Cause obviously I was happy to be honored and happy to be asked. And so Jen and I had this meeting scheduled in the week before we were to meet the, the immediate past executive director of Lucho. And I can't remember his last name resigned, but he had kind of had this, this great opportunity arise in a completely different field. And so he stepped away from that. And he'd been there only a short period of time, about six months and kind of through the, the program in, into disarray because they'd gone through a job search already.

Daren Wang (5m 56s):
And so I w I went down to the end to have, have drank with Janice to talk about my going onto the board. And I sat down, I said, Janice, would you like me to apply for this? And she looked at me like, what, that's, how so I was, I was thrilled. It's a program that, that I've loved since, since the day that I heard about it. And, you know, it's a great community. And I was, I was happy to be happy to be asked. So, you know, we went through the whole application process and I was interviewed by the board and everything, but it was kind of a whirlwind. And here I am,

Steve Nygren: And then we had a pandemic. 

Monica Olsen (6m 37s):
Well, I was thrilled to hear that you had come on as the director of Becker. I thought it was such a coup that we'd gotten you. And so it's nice to hear that it was a mutual sort of admiration. Tell me a little bit, just to back up a little bit, because I'd love the story of how you got here, but tell me a little bit about, you know, how did you find your way to Atlanta, where you, because your background is in, you know, books or in literary. So tell us a little bit about how you got to Atlanta, how you got into the arts and then not elitist into it. Decatur book festival.

Daren Wang (7m 10s):
I, I guess I would, I would say I came to Atlanta with, with bad directions that I graduated. I graduated, I went to college in Ethica, New York. And when I graduated, I didn't have a job. And I, Atlanta was the place to be. It was, you know, late eighties, a lot going on in the economy. And we were talking a little bit before about my, my love of music. You can see all these, well, I guess this is audio interview. Well,

Monica Olsen (7m 37s):
You can tell, but tell us what's behind you. Yeah.

Daren Wang (7m 41s):
I don't know about 2000 albums. I don't know, 1500 CDs on the, on the wall behind me. And, you know, in a lot of ways, music was my, was my first love and the Atlanta music scene, the Georgia music scene in 1989. I mean, it's, it's fantastic right now, but in 1989 it was, I mean, it was the place to be, so I kind of wanted to come down and be part of that and just, just take it in. I can't play, I'm not a musician. I can't play, but I just wanted to be, be in that culture. And like, so I came down and started working, you know, finding jobs in a fairly soon after that, I did my, I did program for national public radio where I was dealing with authors.

Daren Wang (8m 24s):
I started actually started a literary journal called verb in 19, 1990 in audio only format.

Monica Olsen:
 Wow.

Daren Wang:
Yeah, I, I was, I was podcasting 30 years before I was, when I signed on here, Stevie, who's the, the producer for the podcast she's giving me, she's giving me tips on how to, you know, how to record. Yes. I know.

Monica Olsen (8m 55s):
Come help us with our podcast. This from the ground up here, I've learned on the job, Darren.

Daren Wang (9m 2s):
Yeah. I've heard, I've heard your podcast. I don't think I can do, I can help you at all. You guys are doing great work. You don't need, or the, 

Monica Olsen:
the magic behind everything. 

Daren Wang:
Yeah. If, if, if anything, you know, if, if you get a sick day and you need an emergency, I'll come and help.

Monica Olsen (9m 21s):
Don't worry. You're going to regret that Darren.

Daren Wang (9m 26s):
So I had started doing public radio. I did a one w one program for NPR back in, well, I started this literary journal and that led to the NPR program. And then I, I thought I needed to go get a real job. And so I started working, working in the newsletter publishing business, and it was paying the bills, but I was really unhappy. And I wrote a proposal for a 13 part series for national public radio on Southern writers. And I had no background. I had no claim to this. My my degree was in economics, but this is, this was my curiosity.

Daren Wang (10m 7s):
This is what I wanted to learn about. So I wrote this proposal and this is, this is around 96. And I'm looking at web week magazine, which is this big tabloid newspaper type thing. And there was a guy who is starting a books online bookstore in his garage in Seattle. And I said, oh, he'll write me a check for this. So I sent him, so I sent him the proposal and I found, I called up information and I found his number and I called his assistant, said, oh, Mr. Bezos pack that, pack that on the marketing. So I called, so I called, she gave me the number for marketing and they passed it on to legal.

Daren Wang (10m 53s):
And I was literally negotiating my, my little $40,000 underwriting contract with, with Amazon, with the same lawyer who is working through their, their IPO, the biggest IPO in history, 

Monica Olsen:
what a great story.

Daren Wang:
 Right. So I, you know, I got, I got that contract. I, I quit my job and then got my car. And I, I go over on the south for two, two and a half years interviewing Southern authors, which is kind of a dream gig, you know, was

Monica Olsen (11m 27s):
That the spoken word series or was it a different series

Daren Wang (11m 31s):
Called the porches, the south and writers? And like in that series, I was, I was the last person that interviewed James Dickey before he passed away. And I, I mean, there's th there's that whole kind of Pantheon of a certain generation of Southern writers that I, that I, that I got to know out of that a lot of them have passed the Elisabeth. I'm trying to remember. She wrote the light and the Piatsa, she just passed away maybe two weeks ago, but also like Larry Brown and Barry, Barry, Hannah, all, all those kinds of classic Southern writers.

Daren Wang(12m 13s):
And then I also became friends with like, Charles Frazier's, his friend and all this kind of, so I, I did that work. And then I went from there and based on that WBE and Atlanta hired me to, to launch Bailey Jackson's between the lines series. So I did that. I did that for a couple of years, and then I spun off and did my own series. That's the spoken word. That's the one that you mentioned. And that was, I was recording author events throughout the country and, and editing them down and putting them on, on NPR or NPR affiliates that also, I mean, that was great.

Daren Wang(12m 53s):
So I was just driving around and kind of the book festival right. Comes out of that because I, I had gone to a, this, this fantastic little festival, which is no more in South Carolina and Columbia and I, I had a fantastic times, all these authors I knew, and there's a great crowd and everything. And I was driving back and I was with my, with a friend of mine. I was driving back on 20. And I said, how the hell does Columbia, South Carolina have a book festival like that? And Atlanta, Georgia does not.

Daren Wang (13m 34s):
And so I got to Atlanta and I got on the phone and started calling people and kind of put together, put together a group to, to make that all happen. So the first festival was 2006. That, that, that first meeting was 2005. So we took about 18 months to, from sitting around in, in Java monkey and in downtown Decatur to, I, I wish it was mixed. I wish I could claim it was mixed and dumped on. Yeah, I think it was as well.

Daren Wang(14m 15s):
So, but we basically, so it was, it was about 18 months from sitting around in Java monkey on a February cold, February afternoon to the first festival in 2006.

Monica Olsen (14m 28s):
How many authors, like, how big was it the first one in oh six?

Daren Wang (14m 32s):
The first one I think we had about 50 authors and we had close to 40,000 people. 

Monica Olsen (14m 43s):
Wow. That is impressive for the first year.

Daren Wang (14m 46s):
It was, it was, it was, I mean, it was kind of, it was kind of an astounding thing. I don't think anybody really knew what we were going to get out of it. I mean, I've, I've oftentimes said that if it was, if it was the festival that I had planned, it would have turned into about 30 people in an alley with an apple crate and a microphone. But the, the thing I, I think I did best in getting it off the ground is I, I, I really worked to build consensus with the whole Atlanta world, the literary folks and the booksellers and, you know, the newspaper and the city and all that.

Daren Wang (15m 33s):
And I was able to, to pretty fractious lot at some time at some point, but I think that we kind of making a community wide thing and getting everybody behind it. That's, I mean, that's why we ended up with the, with the crowd. We did

Monica Olsen  (15m 51s):
. And that went on for how many years, 

Daren Wang:
the festival?

Daren Wang (15m 57s):
This year, which is going to be virtual will be it's 15,

Monica Olsen(16m 1s):
15th year. Okay, great. And what was last year? How many people and how many authors did you guys have sort of at,

Daren Wang (16m 8s):
Well, last, last year I was, I was hiding, I think the 13th was, that was my last one, or it might've been the 12th, 12th. And I think that was about 75, 80,000 folks. And I mean, the sheer, the sheer will be there, obviously changing the format significantly with, with COVID. So I'm not sure what those numbers will be.

Monica Olsen (16m 36s):
Well, that'd be exciting though.

Steve Nygren:
So you had really an interesting insight into Southern artists, both music and writers. And how do you think they differ from other regions?

 Daren Wang (16m 48s):
Well, I'll tell you the, the Louis Norden, who is a great Southern writer and underrated he's kind of passed away a few years ago, too. I asked him he had the best answer I ever, ever heard that as well. What's the difference between a Southern writer and a writer will say, you know, he went to the hall closet and he, and he got his coat, put it on and left for the, for the party. And the Southern writer will say he went to the hall closet and got his coat, which his second, second cousin gave him on his 43rd birthday. When his two days after his grandfather passed away and put it on and headed out the door that his, his father had had built from hard maple and, you know, 1918.

Daren Wang (17m 35s):
So that's a Southern, I'll tell you the other day, I would send him with my mother and she started telling the story and the story ping pong all over the way you've been living in the south too long mom. 

Monica Olsen (17m 52s):
One of the things is like, how do you think, you know, it's, I love the idea of bringing the consensus and bringing everybody together. How do you think it's impacted Atlanta and the literary scene here?

Daren Wang (18m 3s):
I think, you know, it's, it's, it's tough to talk about this without sounding a little, a little vain or like tooting my own horn. But I feel like there is, I think there's a sense of community and there's a sense of community sense of connectedness within the writing community and within the, the, the book selling community and, and other literary segments that simply did not exist before the book festival. There's, you know, when, when I, when I think of the room of people that we, that we put together for those, those early meetings, they weren't really friendly. The people in the room weren't really friendly with each other.

Daren Wang (18m 46s):
I think that, I think they all are now. And they, I think they, they, they get along. I think writers support them, support each other in ways that they didn't 20 years ago. And I think there's a, you know, I think there's a, there there's a true sense of community now, whereas it didn't exist before, you know, when we started, one of our tasks was we had to go to New York city and pitch the idea of, of an Atlanta book festival to them. And there'd been a couple of temps that had in the, in the years leading up to this and the New York publishers all said the same things, as they said, the Atlanta is not a book title.

Daren Wang (19m 26s):
You can't, this isn't going to work.

Monica Olsen (19m 28s):
I bet that was a challenge.

Daren. Wang(19m 32s):
It was, it was, but it was also, I mean, there was the perception that, right. And there was reason for it because it was, it was so fractious and we had lost, we had lost Oxford books, which old time Atlanta, what is that now?

Monica Olsen (19m 50s):
Is that the same one in Mississippi? ,

Daren Wang (19m 52s):
No. That's square books in Oxford. Yeah. By the way, I just have to mention this because we have Beth and finally the poet Laureate of Mississippi in the, in the cottages right now. Yeah. Right now. So she, she basically lives at square books in Oxford, but Oxford books in Atlanta was, you know, was the 500 pound gorilla in that book world in Atlanta until they, they kind of collapsed from all kinds of reasons, but, and, and everything was kind of contentious after that. So I, I feel like, I feel like the book festival brought people together and in a great way, I always remember when  the day, the first day of the festival or the very first festival somebody grabbed me.

Daren Wang(20m 40s):
I think they had seen me introing the keynote before beforehand. So they knew who I was. They grabbed me and said, I didn't know that all these people were here. This is my tribe. And I've always taken that kind of as a, when I was running the festival, I took that as kind of the serious mission, this kind of curious group of people on tens of thousands of them didn't have another place where they congregated. And it was my, it was my job to make sure that they had that place, that they had that community. 

Monica Olsen: 
I love that.

Steve Nygren (21m 17s):
 did a pub or gathering place ever emerge. Like you read about how other cities?

Daren Wang (21m 23s):
Mean, I think the caterer itself had that if you're, if you're, if you're talking about that, and that would probably be a Leon it's a pub restaurant in downtown Decatur, it was, it was known by many of us as the, you know, the other office essentially we'd go to work out all our business. And when Natasha Trethaway one was named poet Laureate of the United States, we all ended up at, at, at Leon's. And when I, you know, when I published my book, the, the party was at Leon. So that was always kind of the, so it was kind of the place.

Monica Olsen (21m 57s):
Or the gathering place. So the community's changed. Do you think the perceptions changed? Does New York or  C S as a book town now, or,

Daren Wang (22m 7s):
Yeah, I definitely don't think we, we fight that, that challenge anymore. I mean, there's other challenges we fight, we fight with, but I mean, Atlanta has a, has a really robust, you know, literary thing and the book events do pretty well. And it's now, you know, if they're done right. Sometimes they don't.

Monica Olsen (22m 26s):
Right. Definitely. So you've been, so you've been at air for about a year. Will you give us an overview of how the program works and also that it's not just writers that come?

Daren Wang (22m 35s):
Yeah. So, so air Serenbe program is there. We have two lovely artists cottages that have, have been built by the rural studio, adjacent to Serenbe , proper. And we bring artists of all genres, they're writers, painters, musicians, sculptors, we a spoken word, artists, poets. It kind of runs the gamut and that's, that's at the heart and soul of it is that we embrace artists of all forms. And the, the, the root program of Airbnb is the focus fellowships. And those involve bringing an artist for a month in the community.

Daren Wang (23m 17s):
They, they, they have the time and the cottage, we give them a stipend and if they want, if they just want to be heads down and focus on doing work and nothing else, that's an option for them. If on the other hand, they want to engage with public. We, we do public programming, we do lectures or, or demonstrations, or for so on. And, you know, one of the, one of the things that kind of came out of me into, I think you were kind of asking about me coming on board with what that process was like. And the first thing I did was I called all the other members of the national advisory council, kind of one-on-one to, to get their sense of what they thought air should be doing.

Daren Wang (24m 4s):
And to give them my perspective on things and, you know, to tell them that, that they were going to be an important, active part of determining the artistic vision of the organization moving forward. And so, so what happens is we ha we have about 14 of these, these focus fellowships that we offer every year and the NAC, the national advisor council nominates, selects and awards those, those fellowships. But we also have a lot of other types of residencies that we, we invite people in working with community partners, or just reaching out in the arts community, kind of throughout Atlanta and throughout the region to see if who these who could benefit from, you know, a week or two in  lovely serenbe.

Monica Olsen (24m 56s):
Yeah.

Monica Olsen (24m 57s):
Do you have any favorites? I shouldn't ask you favorites, but do you have any that you want to highlight from the past year? I know we've kind of had to take a break because of COVID.

Daren Wang (25m 6s):
Yeah. So we've been, we, we welcomed our first artists back onto, onto the campus on June 12th. And just yesterday, we accepted Beth  finally came over from, from Oxford, but I think the residents would that, that, that matter the most to me. And since I came on board, as I invited a Cullen McDaniel, who was a scholar at Emory university and pallet Pelham was friend of  mine. He was also one of the most brilliant men I've ever known is, is a curator at the rose library.

Daren Wang (25m 46s):
And he was working on his third book, which was, he was weaving together a narrative history out of portraits of African-American soldiers from world war I. And these are all these pictures of black men and black Americans in France and so on. And he had he'd collected hundreds of these. And they, you know, they told this story of this transition of, of a population going from, from one thing to another. And he, and he had routed it to actually to the writings of Frederick Douglas and Pelham. I mean, he was brilliant guy. He was also, he was also a linebacker for the Atlanta Falcons for several years and the Kansas city chiefs.

Daren Wang (26m 34s):
So he's a true athlete scholar, and he's a young man. He was, I think he's in his forties. And he stayed with us in January. And we, I had this, this marvelous dinner with him, things were already kind of, you know, it was, it was a quiet dinner February, January. It was a quiet time for some general, you know, serenbe  can kind of be sedate. Then we had this marvelous meal and we were talking about all those plans and the, he really understood the nut of this book, the heart of it. And he w he wrote me a letter and thanked me for the time and how much it meant to him. And about two months ago, we got word that he died of COVID out of, just out of, I mean, the NFL level athlete.

Daren Wang (27m 24s):
And he just, he just, he was, he was self quarantining with a son and he stood up and, and he just collapsed. And I mean, I had that five years ago, I'd been on a run into him at the YMCA here in Decatur. And I'm like on the treadmill next to this guy. And he's, you know, he's 13 miles an hour on the treadmill is cranking it out. I'm dying on at six miles an hour, 7 miles an hour. 
It's just heartbreaking. 

Monica Olsen:
Yeah. Heartbreaking

Monica Olsen (27m 59s):
Is his, his project is going to be picked up by anybody, or

Daren Wang (28m 2s):
 I, I don't know how, I don't know. I don't, yeah. I don't know how he can do it. He's, you know, his work is his work at Emory. I'm hoping. I mean, he will, we'll continue with some of his other work there, but yeah. Who is a very, very good man. Yeah.

Monica Olsen (28m 23s):
Well, that is really sad. Just tear, but I love that you add that moment with him, at least in one of his work, and maybe there's a way for it to be picked up by somebody else.

 Daren Wang:
I hope so.
 
Monica Olsen:
Do you find that the pandemic, you know, has from the artists you've been talking to has, is going to be changed because of the pandemic?

Daren Wang (28m 44s):
Well, I, I think that right. It's, it's in the water essentially. Right? We, I don't think that, you know, I, I don't think that it can not be, I think a challenge would be to, to write or paint and not have it affect us in some way. You know, one of the last artists we had in the cottages was Bo Bartlett. Who's a fantastic painter. And, you know, he was talking about how, how useful the time was because the campus had shut down while he was here. And they determined that he could stay until, but we couldn't bring in anybody after him and Cola.

Daren Wang (29m 28s):
We got to this current point, and I don't think that it affected the work that he was, he showed me while he was here. And I think he had had some, something of a, plan in place for the work he was doing. But I feel like this time here in lockdown and his time also in Columbus and lockdown, I feel like it will, they will affect things

Monica Olsen (29m 53s):
Well, and he was, you know, he took over a space that was in transition. That was on the street here. That was a retail, it was our yoga studio and that had just moved. And so he was working in that space with big windows. And I know that he engaged with the residents quite a bit until COVID, you know, it was, it started becoming a little bit of a dance around him. And he was very sweet to let people walk in privately and look at the work. But I think a lot of people had mentioned that they really would have loved to have done a dinner with him or met him or talked to him more. And so I think that's the opportunity once we sort of, as we're coming out of things, but who knows what's going to happen to really figure out how to engage those artists with the community on a, a mutually beneficial level.

Daren Wang (30m 38s):
Yeah. You know, I'm, I'm corresponding with him still today about this, and he's, he's eager to come back. I mean, I'll tell you that when, when he was here, he was, he was, I mean, he was walking around, looking at houses in love with the place, but he, and I, I think he was disappointed that he couldn't, he couldn't interact more. I think he was, he was really enjoying it. He was, I could tell how, how much he was feeding off of, off of the landscape and the architecture and the, and everything it's going to be. And I was, I think it was, it was helping drive his creativity. So I think he's eager to come back and we're, we're working through that as soon as we can find, like I keep saying, I'm not going to be the one to innovate a way to, to do public programming in the midst of COVID, somebody else can figure that out.

Daren Wang (31m 32s):
We'll copy. But as soon as, as soon as we can do so safely, then I'm, you know, really eager. I mean, we've got, you know, we just had a, had a great virtual panel with children's authors, which we haven't we've we have a good history with, and we've got a, I'm working through an event right now with, I mentioned that Tasha CREs away, who's the poet Laureate. Her memoir is coming out in August and we'll be doing a virtual event in partnership with the Atlanta history center. And I know you had asked about Paul Rutger at one point and, and we're, we're working out dates for, for him to come down to rejoin us.

Daren Wang (32m 15s):
So we've got this great slate of talent coming, and those are just, those are the ones that we've, that have kind of popped up along the way. Along with our focus fellows, we've got regular scheduled, but we can't do anything public with it. 

 Monica Olsen(32m 29s):
Tell us about, you know, because again, public couldn't really happen and you've done some great zoom programming, like with Jason Reynolds, you mentioned the children's authors, but you also started a program called up in air,

Daren Wang(32m 41s):
Something in there, something in the air, something in the air when

Monica Olsen(32m 45s):
You started something called something in the air, going back to your audio routes, right? Do you call it a podcast?

Daren Wang (32m 53s):
Well, it's, it's, , I'm calling it profile. Some of them, some of it is print. Some of it is audio. We will have, we'll have a little film here. Aaron again has a, has a long history of doing film and stuff. Brandon before me had a great series called filmer and at heart it's. I mean, it's a lot of different things. I think one of the things will drive. It is profiles of the artists that are coming to join us. I think one of, one of the things that I have, I felt wasn't getting enough attention from air was introducing the artists into the community.

Daren Wang (33m 38s):
If the artists wanted like Bo Bartlett's a perfect example, he would have loved to be more in touch with the, the, a certain big community he couldn't, but we want to tell the story of Bo Bartlett before he arrives so that when you see him having a drink at the, at the end or grabbing a sandwich at, at blue Daisy, you can go up and say hi to him. And, you know, and he'll know who he is and what his his work is. And we'll, we'll we'll do we hope to do dinners? There's something when the opportunity arises, but I mean, that's, that's kind of one of the fundamental pieces that we want to make happen there. The other thing is we want to, and we were thinking, so we're thinking about a couple of different audiences.

Daren Wang(34m 21s):
One is the Serenbe  community. One is the artists that we have coming in. We want them to know what the Serenbei community is like. So we're doing profiles of artists within the Serenbe community. So we did Christine Janae, and we'll be doing some more as we, as we move forward. And we're also doing some profiles of Atlanta arts leaders that may or may not be directly related to Serenbe, but I'll tell the story of arts in Atlanta. So I, I interviewed Loius Rights a little while ago, which is turning the tables a little bit.

Daren Wang (35m 3s):
And we'll, we'll post that in the coming weeks. And I had John Kessler who came and visited, stayed with a couple a couple of years ago, and he's coming down, I think in September again. So we got, we got his long-time food writer for the AJC. So I got his, his, and he's been heading up one of the, the main committees on the James Beard foundation. So I was able to get a look at what's been going on and the food world through his eyes, which I think is right.

Monica Olsen (35m 39s):
And we're hoping to get our recent, our current interview with Charles Buffet. Who's a new Yorker staff writer. I know that we're going to connect and try and get him down as well, possibly when Paul's here, which would be amazing.

Daren Wang (35m 54s):
Yeah. I think that, I think that'd be fantastic, you know, it would be, it'd be great parents. So all of those kinds of profiles, you know, we're, it's serving a lot of, a lot of different purposes, but I think there'll be, they're all should be fun and interesting in that too. Not too lengthy, you know? 

Steve Nygren(36m 16s):
So are you looking at anything to, to connect different artists that might feed off of one another at the same time, even different fields?

Daren Wang (36m 24s):
Yeah. I think I I'd love to make that happen. And for example, right now, so we have in the cottages, we have any Humphrey, who's a, who's a screenwriter and a filmmaker and Beth and Fennelly and the other one, and I kind of introduced them. They have a bunch of friends in common. I know a lot of people in common and he actually worked at one of the local bookstores at one point. So I think that those, those folks will, will feed off of each other. It can be challenging right. To, to kind of force those things. You know, you hope that they happen organically and we've had a decent amount of that, of that occur. But part of the challenges is scheduling, right?

Daren Wang (37m 5s):
Getting good people to cross-pollinate in the same in, at the same time,

Steve Nygren (37m 10s):
That's going to be easier to do organically.

Daren Nygren (37m 13s):
I'd like to think so. I'd like to think so. Let's, let's have a talk about, put a plan together.

Monica Olsen (37m 21s):
One of the things I want to touch on before we wrap up is you have a novel that you had mentioned. You did a, a launch party for recently called the hidden light of Northern fires. It's a historical fiction. It's set in the south, in the civil war.

Daren Wang (37m 38s):
Actually, it's set in the north, in the civil war,

Monica Olsen (37m 41s):
Oh hence Northern fires north during the civil wars. Tell us a little bit about it and tell us, like how long did it take to write and what's going on?

Daren Wang (37m 51s):
It took me forever to write, but I mean the, the quick pitches, so Townline New York is the only place north of the Mason Dixon to secede from the union. This is, this is all, is all true seceded from the union in December of 1861, it didn't rejoin until 1946. I'll I'll try and make this as short as possible. My, my parents moved, moved into town in New York in 1971. And the house they moved us into was, was part of the underground railroad.

Daren Wang (38m 31s):
And it was built by the, it was a converted barn built by the town's founder. So it was an underground railroad station run by a woman named Mary Willis in the middle of a town that had seceded from the union. 

Monica Olsen:
Wow.

Daren Wang:
 So that's kinda, hat's kind of the heart and soul of it, but the thing, the thing I think most, most relevant about book, I think for, for the topic of this conversation, is it was, it was that right? When I think about how to create a good creative working space for artists and in the cottages, I keep going back to, I mean, it took, it did take me about eight years to write this book because I didn't really know how to, how to write fiction or how to write that kind of sentence when I started.

Daren Wang(39m 22s):
And, you know, I revised it and revise it. And that's this level of concentrations level of focus that doesn't come easy. And when I think of what the cottages can do, I think of how valuable time in a space like that can be to somebody that's trying to focus and get that work done. So at, at heart, when I, when I look at how to run their Serenbe in the how to how artists in serenbe should be working, I asked myself constantly what that our artist experiences like when they're in the cottage, how that, how that should be, how we can support them and how, you know, what little things make it easier for them.

Daren Wang (40m 5s):
And I feel like because of my time as a novelist, I have a better sense of that than the most. 

Monica Olsen:
I love that

Monica Olsen (40m 13s):
If you could do, I'll ask you one last question. If you could do anything with air, like create a program, kind of sky's the limit, what would that look like?

Daren Wang (40m 26s):
I would love the turn. I mean, I would love to turn the art farm, right? So the the, the cottages live on the art farm, and then there's, there's all this other stations. And I mean, I would love to find a way to turn it into a hub of, of that kind of creativity, where our artists have have space and time and everything to do the work that, that is important to them. But there's also, there's some permeability between that and the, and the creative community within Serenbe, so that they, so that there's learning, going back and forth between the two of them and that the that's, the art farm is it's is it's entity, but then it's also, it also feels of more of a part of serenbe.

Daren Wang (41m 13s):
And I think that, I think there'd be a public programming component of that. I think there's, there's performance. There's all kinds of, I mean, that's, you know, that, to me feels like a trajectory for, for air where, you know, we have, we have additional space, you could build up several more cottages and have a, have a really rich experience for multiple artists where there's a lot more opportunity for cross-pollinization going on. And we, and it all comes together in this gumbo on the, over, over on the art farm.

Monica Olsen (41m 55s):
It's great.

Steve Nygren (41m 55s):
I love that. So let's, let's plan a walk in the woods of the art farm and a whiteboard session

Daren Wang (42m 2s):
 I would love to do that, Steve, you know, I, if, if you want us, it's, it's four o'clock. If you want to start at five, I'll get in my car and we'll be done.

Steve Nygren (42m 15s):
I'm going to follow up. And then we're going to put a time on the calendar and the very near future. I'd love to do that.

Monica Olsen:
 Well, Darren, is there anything else you want to share with us or let us know that we didn't cover?

Daren Wang(42m 25s):
No, I think that's all, I'm just, I'm, I'm really grateful to be, you know, in the fold to be part of Serenbe and it's a real pleasure of being.

Steve Nygren (42m 34s):
Honored. That you're part of the fault. I mean, you, you are a real talent and, and name and the greater Atlanta and the south, and to have you connected with Air, Serenbe, I think it can go to where you and we all dream. Yeah. I love it. 

Daren Wang:
Thank you so much. 

Monica Olsen:
Two rubrics in building a city, you can follow the sprawl mentality, or you can preserve land while boosting economic development, semi builds and designs to be both beautiful and environmentally sustainable. If you're a city planner, developer, Landon, or a policy maker, there are common sense solutions you can take to build a biophilic center community placemaking conferences fall to learn more details and nygren placemaking.com.

2 (43m 21s)
That's N Y G R E N P L A C E M AK I N G.COM

Monica Olsen (43m 36s):
Thank you for listening to serenbe stories. New episodes are available on Mondays. Please rate and review the podcast and make sure to email your questions for Steve Nygren to stories@serenbe.com may even get to hear them on the podcast. More details about episodes and guests are available on our website, serenbe, stories.com.