Shows
I'll Follow You036 In Conversation with the Critical Thinking Witch CollectiveShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
Today I am delighted to be in conversation with two organizers from the Critical Thinking Witch Collective, Alex Wrekk and Maya Amatvult. Alex and Maya were kind enough to join me in my digital studio to talk about the work they’re doing with the Crit Witches, specifically in the lead-up to the annual Con that’ll be happening this September 27th, 28th, and 29th. The upcoming Con is entitled “Perception (and Perspective) Check! Life Through a Seeker's Len.” Tickets are on sale now.
2024-09-021h 07I'll Follow YouThird Season Finale!Show notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
I just wanted to pop in here quickly and let all you lovely listeners know that you’re not going to be seeing any fresh episodes in your feed for a short while so that I can turn my attention to some other creative projects that I’ve had simmering on the back burner. And honestly, I just want to give my podcasting muscles a proper rest, rather than inadvertently burning myself out, so that I’m refreshed and ready to rock with a fresh batch of episodes for you sooner...
2024-03-0404 minI'll Follow You035 On the Energy of Creativity with Film and TV Editor Jeanette Elaine DuboisShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
Today I am simply delighted to be in conversation with Jeanette Elaine Dubois.
Jeanette is a member of the Motion Picture Editors Guild and has 25 years of experience cutting a wide variety of projects for film and television. She’s worked on the Emmy Award-winning shows Super Soul Sessions with Oprah Winfrey and Artbound on PBS, as well as Emmy-nominated documentaries including The Day My God Died. Recently she’s worked for Steve Harvey’s Steve on Watch and has just completed editing her second season of Married to Rea...
2024-02-191h 08I'll Follow You034 Chatting with Michael O'Donnell About His Debut Novel "Above the Fire"Show notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
This week I am absolutely thrilled to share my conversation with the writer Michael O’Donnell.
Michael is the author of the novel Above the Fire. Published by Blackstone Publishing in December 2023, Above the Fire crystallizes the relationship between a father and son as they survive a winter of isolation. The book has received starred reviews from Booklist and Shelf Awareness, and the audiobook edition recently won the AudioFile Earphones Award. Michael’s nonfiction writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal, The...
2024-02-051h 03I'll Follow You033 On Scent and Soap with Hayley J. Croom of Paintbox SoapworksShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
This week I am absolutely thrilled to be in conversation with Hayley J. Croom of Paintbox Soapworks.
Queer, witchy, feminist, and leftist-owned since 2009, Paintbox Soapworks is devoted to making small batch soaps, skincare, and bath products in unique and irreverent scents. It’s a one-person show, and each product is made by hand using vegan friendly, coconut-free custom formulas with no SLS, parabens, or phthalates. Their goal is to get you clean and smelling amazing, and to work a little magic with every blend they make to transform an...
2024-01-221h 33I'll Follow You032 A Chat with Hollywood Costume Supervisor Sara WalbridgeShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
For this first episode of 2024, I’m really excited to share my conversation with Hollywood costume supervisor Sara Walbridge. Sara is a graduate of The Theatre School at DePaul University in Chicago and has been steadily working in Hollywood for over 20 years. Some of her best known TV projects include Love and Death, Barry, GLOW, and True Blood, and her film credits include Don’t Look Up, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Vice, and Beautiful Boy.
In our chat today, she gives me the lowdown on how costume supe...
2024-01-101h 11
I'll Follow YouA Christmas Passage from Paul Weston's Book AtargatisShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
Rather than release a normal interview episode today, I thought I’d just put a little audio trinket in your stocking, so to speak. I’d like to read a short selection from a book called "Atargatis," which is by the English writer, lecturer, hypnotherapist, and Reiki Master Paul Weston. Featuring original musical accompaniment by Brian Cremins.
2023-12-2405 minI'll Follow You031 On the Intersection of Science and Spirituality with Allison ClarkShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
Today I’m incredibly psyched to share with you my conversation with science writer and medical intuitive Allison Clark. Allison is a heart-centered, holistically-minded healer who takes into consideration all aspects of a person—not just their body and not just their soul. Her approach is an alchemy of years of training, scientific research, and personal mind, body, and spirit work. She’s studied clairvoyant and energy healing techniques for well over a decade and has learned from experts including Cyndi Dale, Kelly Meehan, Bruce Lipton, and Robert Moss. She also g...
2023-12-111h 14I'll Follow You030 On Papercraft and Feminism with Sadie TeperShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
I’m delighted to be in conversation with visual artist and graphic designer Sadie Teper.
Sadie is the founder and owner of Twentysome Design. Twentysome is a lady-powered feminist stationery and gift brand. Sadie’s design background enables her to create bright and colorful hand-lettered designs that empower and inspire others to spread the message of positive change while still encompassing cheeky wit and feminist fun. We talk about the origin of her brand name; how the text on her first greeting cards was really just an extension of her o...
2023-11-271h 10I'll Follow You029 On Problem Solving and Process with Jerome PohlenShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
Today on I'll Follow You, I am super excited to bring you my conversation with the author and editor Jerome Pohlen.
Jerry has written 23 books for both adults and children, including Oddball Illinois (which is the flagship title of the larger Oddball travel book series), The Apollo Missions for Kids, Albert Einstein and Relativity for Kids, Gay & Lesbian History for Kids, and Chicago Baby, as well as articles and op-eds for the Los Angeles Times, Advocate, and the Chicago Reader. Since 2001, he has worked for publishing house Chicago...
2023-11-131h 26I'll Follow You028 On Music and Healing with Marta JohnsonShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
Today I am delighted to be in conversation with pianist and healer Marta Johnson.
Marta’s first career was as a professional pianist, mostly working in the classical and musical theater worlds in Chicago. However, a crisis of performance anxiety brought her to the world of inner healing and spiritual growth. And now she uses Internal Family Systems and AuraTransformation in her own life as well as in her professional practice with others. If you’ve never heard of Internal Family Systems, much less AuraTransformation, don’t worry—they’re...
2023-10-301h 19I'll Follow You027 Behind the Scenes with Cemal OzdemirShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
I am so excited to share with you my conversation with my very dear, very funny, and very brilliant friend Cemal Ozdemir.
Cemal spent nearly 30 years with the firm Dauby O’Connor & Zaleski (DOZ), a leader in affordable housing and real estate accounting, starting there as an intern in 1993 and ultimately becoming Chief Executive Officer in early 2020. He stepped down in 2022 to focus exclusively on his newest project, Ozwell Fitness, an elevated wellness studio that combines the two core elements of wellness–fitness and recovery–into a single, seamle...
2023-10-161h 21I'll Follow You026 In Conversation with Ed Bialon and Don Graves of the Terry Felus TrioShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
Today on I’ll Follow You, I’m in conversation with two of the most influential people in my musical life, Ed Bialon and Don Graves.
Ed and Don were members of my dad’s band, the Terry Felus Trio, for about ten years, from the early 1970s through the early 1980s.
The Terry Felus Trio was known and loved around Northwest Indiana as a great party band, getting hired to play for wedding receptions, milestone anniversary celebrations, and New Year’s Eve shows, though they were als...
2023-10-021h 35I'll Follow You025 A Chat with Author and Journalist Saga BriggsShow notes are available at QueenofPeaches.com.
Today on I’ll Follow You, I’m super excited to share my recent conversation with author and journalist Saga Briggs. If you’re listening to this on the day that the episode initially goes live, Saga’s first book will be officially published tomorrow, Tuesday, September 19. It’s called How to Change Your Body: The Science of Interoception and Healing Through Connection to Yourself and Others and, as you’ll hear me enthusiastically state at the top of our chat, I really think everyone should read it.
Beyond the bo...
2023-09-181h 11
I'll Follow You024 A Chat with Francesca Kritikos about PoetryPlease visit QueenofPeaches.com for full show notes.
Francesca Kritikos is the author of the chapbooks It Felt Like Worship (published by Sad Spell Press in 2017) and Animals Don't Go to Hell (published by Bottlecap Press in 2021) as well as the forthcoming full-length collection Exercise in Desire (which will be published by Vegetarian Alcoholic Press in early 2022). Her poetry has also appeared in the Des Pair Quarterly, Ghost City Review, and Witch Craft Mag. She completed the undergraduate creative writing program at the University of East Anglia in the UK in 2017. She is on Instagram @fmkrit.
2021-10-111h 02I'll Follow You023 I'll Follow You: A Chat with Pascuala Herrera about Self-PublishingVisit QueenofPeaches.com for full show notes.
Pascuala Herrera was a Professor and Accessibility Specialist at Harper College in Palatine, Illinois, for almost 30 years and was selected as Distinguished Faculty, the highest honor given to a faculty member, in 2019 and is now faculty emeritus. She is currently also a full-time consultant and author of Not Always a Valley of Tears: A Memoir of a Life Well Lived. Pascuala received her BA in Sociology and M.Ed in Reading and Learning Disabilities at DePaul University in Chicago. She is a frequent local and national presenter on the topics o...
2021-08-161h 12I'll Follow You022 My Writing Is How I Connect with People: A Chat with S. Elizabeth of Unquiet ThingsVisit QueenofPeaches.com for complete show notes.
S. Elizabeth is a writer, curator, and frill-seeker. Her essays and interviews about esoteric art have appeared in Coilhouse, Dirge Magazine, Death & The Maiden, as well as on her own occulture blog Unquiet Things, which intersects music, fashion, horror, perfume, and grief. Born of the strange and fraught relationship between an astrologer and an artist, S. Elizabeth draws upon the magic in her blood and a lifelong passion for the visual arts to explore her obsessions through her writing. She is the co-creator of The Occult Activity Book Volumes 1 and 2...
2021-07-191h 13I'll Follow You021 A Conversation with Tim Clarke, the Translator of IN MAYComplete show notes are available on QueenofPeaches.com.
Tim Clarke has performed throughout Europe, North America, and the UK, including close to 1,000 appearances on London’s West End stages. He’s had leading roles in productions including Jesus Christ Superstar, Blood Brothers, The Buddy Holly Story, Dusty—The Musical, The Glenn Miller Story, and The Demon Headmaster. Tim’s television roles have included Sir Richard Byngham in The Spanish Armada, fireman Mick Foster in Emmerdale, and Detective Inspector Goodman in Canary Wharf, as well as numerous TV commercials.
As a musician, he’s written and recorded t...
2021-07-051h 33I'll Follow You020 Hilary Webb: We Breathe TogetherComplete show notes are available on QueenofPeaches.com.
Today, I’m in conversation with my very dear friend, singer Hilary Webb.
Originally from Schererville, Indiana, Hilary began studying voice at the age of 13. She earned her bachelor’s from Ball State University, where she studied with Mary Hagopian, and she earned her master’s in vocal performance from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She has worked with John Rutter, Dan Forrest, Beverly Sills, Barbara Hahn, and The King’s Singers and has been soprano section leader at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church in Greensboro, North Ca...
2020-06-221h 08
2020-06-1410 minI'll Follow You019 “It’s Not About Where You Are That Makes You Safe, It’s About How You’re Connected to the Earth”–A Chat with Myan BinderVisit QueenofPeaches.com for complete show notes!
Myan Binder is a healer, clairvoyant, animal communicator, and spiritual teacher. She has studied painting at the University of Wisconsin and art direction at the Miami Ad School and has taught everything from preschool to ESL to adult refugees. Currently, she teaches classes on all things psychic, including energy awareness, how to turn on your own abilities, how to heal yourself through working with your own energy, how to use your psychic abilities in your everyday life, and how to communicate with other animals.
She is also the crea...
2020-05-111h 00I'll Follow You018 "My Path Was Just Sort of Chosen for Me"--A Chat with Brian Westfall of Rare Birds Musical OdditiesVisit QueenofPeaches.com for complete show notes!
Today I’m delighted to be in conversation with Brian Westfall. Brian is the proprietor of the shop Rare Birds Musical Oddities.
Rare Birds is a shop dedicated to those elusive, beautiful, and lovingly weird pieces that will bring character and vibe to your recording dates, home studio, and performances.
Vintage guitars, basses, and synths; cowbells once owned by real cows; Casio keyboards once owned by real 1980s kids; maracas brought back from a great aunt’s college trip to Mexico; drum machines that used to sit on...
2020-05-0457 minI'll Follow You017 “Traveling with the Ghost of Someone He Admires”--A Conversation About Music Books with Brian CreminsVisit QueenofPeaches.com for complete show notes!
Today I’m welcoming back to the show my first repeat guest--who also happens to be the human I’m sheltering in place with--the writer, musician, and scholar Brian Cremins.
Brian’s joining me today for a recorded version of an ongoing conversation we’ve been having basically since we first met a little over a decade ago, all about our favorite books about music.
Because we’re both writers and both musicians, it turns out we have a lot of thoughts about the intersection of those two di...
2020-04-271h 09I'll Follow You016 “I Have Something I’d Like to Say, But How Do I Best Say It?”–A Chat with Yuval TaylorVisit QueenofPeaches.com for complete show notes!
I’m delighted today to be in conversation with my very good friend and former colleague Yuval Taylor.
Yuval is the coauthor of the books Darkest America: Black Minstrelsy from Slavery to Hip-Hop and Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Antioch Review, and the Oxford American, among other publications. His most recent book, as a solo author, is Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and Betrayal, which was a finalist for the 2019 Los Angeles Times Book Pr...
2020-04-201h 04I'll Follow You015 "Respect What It Is That's Going On Inside of You"--A Chat with Erin the Psychic WitchVisit QueenofPeaches.com for show notes!
In my attempt to bridge the gap between not wanting to add to the noise about the coronavirus situation, but then also not wanting to ignore its presence in our lives either, I thought that a conversation with my brilliant friend Erin the Psychic Witch might be unique and helpful.
Erin is a gifted psychic teacher and healer with two decades of experience in the healing arts. With a substantial and wide-ranging background in bodywork, natural skin care, holistic and functional nutrition models, energy healing, and psychic development, she...
2020-04-131h 01I'll Follow You014 “No, But We’ve Seen It Done”--A Chat with Paul and Angie Lowe about Jesus Christ SuperstarVisit QueenofPeaches.com for show notes!
Paul and Angie Lowe were teachers for many decades at Lake Central High School in St. John, Indiana. During the weekdays, Paul taught speech and Angie taught French, and then on afternoons and weekends, they were heads of the theater program, known as the Lake Central Theatre Guild. As you’ll hear them elaborate in the course of the episode, they expanded LCTG’s program in the early 1970s to include former graduates and members of the local theater scene in their summer community theater productions. Nearly a quarter century after they...
2020-04-061h 05I'll Follow You013 “A Nice Way to Think About One’s Relationship with Time and Objects”–A Chat About Perfume with Shiamin KwaVisit QueenofPeaches.com for show notes!
Welcome to the perfume episode!
Today I’m in conversation with my dear and brilliant friend Shiamin Kwa.
Shiamin is Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and Comparative Literature at Bryn Mawr College. She is the author of three books, the most recent being Regarding Frames: Thinking with Comics in the Twenty-first Century, which was just released by RIT Press in February of this year. Her written work explores relationships between form and content, text and image, self and self-presentation, surface and depth, and the conflic...
2020-03-301h 09I'll Follow You012 "The Guiding Light Is Surprise"--A Chat with Tony TrigilioVisit queenofpeaches.com for show notes!
Today, I’m incredibly pleased to be speaking with my friend, neighbor, and former bandmate, the poet Tony Trigilio.
Tony is the author and editor of 13 books, including, most recently, Ghosts of the Upper Floor (published by BlazeVOX [books] in 2019), which is the third installment in his multivolume poem, The Complete Dark Shadows (of My Childhood). His selected poems, Fuera del Taller del Cosmos, was published in Guatemala by Editorial Poe (translated by Bony Hernández). He is editor of Elise Cowen: Poems and Fragments (published by Ahsahta Press in 2...
2020-03-231h 11I'll Follow You011 "I Don't Want to Be an Expert"–A Chat with Keiler RobertsVisit queenofpeaches.com for show notes!
Keiler Roberts has been writing autobiographical comics for ten years. Her six books include Sunburning, Chlorine Gardens, and, most recently, Rat Time, all three of which were published by Koyama Press. Her self-published autobiographical comic series Powdered Milk received an Ignatz Award for Outstanding Series in 2016, and in 2019 Chlorine Gardens received Slate's Cartoonist Studio Prize for Best Print Comic of 2018, which was selected by The Slate Book Review and The Center for Cartoon Studies. Her work has been included in The Best American Comics in 2016 and 2018 and was mentioned on their Notabl...
2020-03-161h 05I'll Follow You010 “I Would Always Say Yes to a Spiritual Experience”–A Chat with Angie YingstVisit QueenofPeaches.com for show notes!
Today on the show I’m incredibly pleased to be in conversation with Angie Yingst.
Angie is a published writer, a sacred artist, a Usui Reiki Master Teacher, and an Earth Medicine Practitioner specializing in shamanic and crystal healing techniques.
Angie has been reading Tarot for thirty years and is a member of the American Tarot Association. She has also trained through the Hibiscus Moon Crystal Academy as a Certified Crystal Healer and an Advanced Crystal Master, and she now serves the school and its community as Cu...
2020-03-091h 14I'll Follow You009 "Luckily Theater Saved Me"--A Chat with Paul StorialeClick here for show notes!
This week on the show, I’m delighted to be speaking with a very dear friend, the theatrical impresario and President of NoHo himself, Mr. Paul Storiale.
Paul is the Artistic Director for the Defiance Theatre Company, the President and Founder of the Valley Theatre Awards in Los Angeles, and creator of the award-winning stage play The Columbine Project. He’s also the creator of the web series Gossip Boy, which you can stream on Amazon Prime, and a successful comedic actor in his own right, having performed for many year...
2020-03-021h 06I'll Follow You008 "Everything Is Interdisciplinary"--A Chat with David HigginsClick here for show notes!
Today I’m pleased to have on the show one of my all-time favorite humans, David Higgins.
David teaches English at Inver Hills Community College in Minnesota. He is a specialist in 20th-century American literature and culture, and his research explores transformations in imperial fantasy during the Cold War period and beyond. His article “Toward a Cosmopolitan Science Fiction” won the 2012 Science Fiction Research Association’s Pioneer Award for excellence in scholarship. He has published in journals such as American Literature, Science Fiction Studies, Science Fiction Film and Television, and Extrapol...
2020-02-241h 10I'll Follow You007 Learning How to Meet People Where They're At with Michael SherronGo to QueenofPeaches.com for show notes.
Michael Sherron is currently an apprentice docent from the class of 2018 at the Phoenix Art Museum and now leads tours there for adults and school groups. In his day job, he's an engineering manager building large scale cloud hosting solutions for the enterprise.
Mike is one of the most remarkable people I know, in terms of his sheer capacity to tackle incredibly ambitious projects simply for the joy of learning how to do them. That deep focus and insatiable curiosity is definitely at the heart of what led...
2020-02-171h 16I'll Follow You006 Writing and Recording American Romantic Music with Brian CreminsClick here for show notes!
Just this past week, my band, the Felus Cremins Band, released our latest album. It’s called American Romantic Music, and you can stream or download it on Bandcamp.
To mark the occasion, I asked my bandmate and partner Brian Cremins to join me to chat specifically about the making of the title track, the song “American Romantic Music.”
Rather than slogging through a whole boring track-by-track rundown of the entire album, I thought it might be instructive to focus just on this one song. I think the proces...
2020-02-101h 26I'll Follow You005 Creating an Underground Awards Show with the Nick Movie AwardsIf you were on Twitter the day that the 2019 Oscar nominations were announced, you may have noticed a little viral excitement about an alternate set of awards called the Elsie’s. However, to a select handful of people, this whole idea of the Elsie’s sounded strangely familiar.
See, there’s another individually produced, underground movie awards ceremony that’s been around for nearly 30 years now, and that’s the Nick Movie Awards.
Established in 1992 by Nick Ivankovic, the Nick Movie Awards began as a way for Nick to honor his favorite films and performances each year...
2020-02-021h 04I'll Follow You004 Going from Point A to Point B By Way of Q and Pi with Gene Kannenberg Jr.Click here for additional podcast notes!
Gene Kannenberg Jr. is a cartoonist living in Evanston, Illinois. His comics, mostly abstract with asemic writing, include Qodèxx, Space Year 2015, and The Abstract Circus. His work was included in the Minnesota Center for Book Arts' 2017 exhibit "Asemic Writing: Offline & In the Gallery" and also appears in the book Abstraction et bande dessinée, produced by the ACME Comics Research Group at the University of Liège in Belgium.
Gene received his PhD from the University of Connecticut in 2002, and he has served in the past as Chair of...
2020-01-271h 20I'll Follow You003 Storytelling through Resonant Material with Lewis LainLewis Lain's work focuses on storytelling, simple aesthetics, and recycled "resonant" material. He favors re-claimed windows and found-glass as canvas, which he combines with cardboard and acrylic to create multi-dimensional paintings punctuated by saturated color and bold linework.
Notable work includes his recent 10-year solo retrospective reevaluating “a” at the Dittmar Gallery on campus at Northwestern University; the online comic Smaller Totems; and the Turned Earth Little Lenormand. Find Lewis online at lewislain.com and be sure to support him on Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/lewislain).
2020-01-201h 02I'll Follow You002 Considering Reinvention with Kate MerenaNew year's resolutions have become pretty stale to me over the past several years. They've just started to seem so joyless, so totally focused on self-improvement in a way that, at least speaking for myself, was starting to feel synonymous with self-punishment.
But Reinvention, though. Ahh, Reinvention is like catnip to me. The idea of making myself into a completely different person living a completely different life? Sign me up.
So, to dig in a little deeper on what it even means to reinvent oneself, I wanted to chat with someone I consider to be...
2020-01-1356 minI'll Follow You001 Best Movies of the Decade with Casey AndrewsTo inaugurate the show, I'm going to be chatting today with Casey Andrews.
Casey is Professor of English at Whitworth University in Spokane, Washington. He is the author of the book Writing Against War: Literature, Activism, and the British Peace Movement, which was published by Northwestern University Press in May 2017 and has been described as "a highly original, densely researched, and beautifully written work of scholarship." He is also a regular contributor to The Cresset, a journal of commentary on literature, the arts, and public affairs published by Valparaiso University. His most recent piece for The Cresset is on Jim...
2020-01-041h 31I'll Follow YouHello and Welcome--TrailerWelcome to the first (short!) preview episode of I'll Follow You, hosted by Allison Felus.
2019-12-2604 min
A Chatter Of FactEpisode 20 - Blog vs PodcastLet's compare blogs and podcasts. This is a fun and interesting exploration into the journey of creative application. (It's also a great "how to" lesson in blogging) Two very different bloggers share their unique stories and reasons for doing what they do. Allison Felus (Queen of Peaches) and Don Martinez (Until the Race is Run) join Robby and explore how creative juices can flow into text and audio. BONUS: SOMEBODY on this episode is a psychic. Don't leave when the credits roll!
2016-09-062h 43