Season 01's finale is made in partnership with The Hopkins Review (THR), the award-winning journal of literature and culture from the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University. Follow along with a selection of images from the conversation, and pre-order Volume 18 now, at hopkinsreview.com/john-waters. Listener discretion is advised.
John Waters is a filmmaker, actor, artist, and writer. Crowned the “Pope of Trash” by William S. Burroughs in 1986, his cult films include Pink Flamingos (1972), Desperate Living (1977), Polyester (1981), and Hairspray (1988). John is the author of eight books, including the autobiography Shock Value (1981), the memoir Role Models (2010), Carsick: John Waters Hitchhikes Across America (2014), and his recent debut novel Liarmouth: A Feel-Bad Romance, published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux in 2022. For over 30 years, John’s visual art — his photography, sculpture, prints, and installations, have re-contextualized art, pop culture, and life as we generally know it. His works are in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and the New Museum in New York, among others.
Dora Malech is the editor in chief of The Hopkins Review and a professor in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Her poems appear in publications that include The New Yorker, Poetry, and the Best American Poetry. Her fifth book of poetry, Trying × Trying, is forthcoming from the Carnegie Mellon University Press in Fall 2025.
To celebrate John as THR’s next featured cover artist, he joins Sevy and Dora for a freewheeling conversation through the people and themes that have defined the American iconoclast’s career. From playing “car accident” in junkyards as a child to re-trying LSD in Provincetown at 70, hear John’s stories as told through a selection of his own creations.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
Jill Gage is Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation on the History of Printing and the Bibliographer for British Literature and History at the Newberry Library, Chicago’s independent research library, founded in 1887. In addition to conducting research, conserving artifacts, and teaching classes, Jill is preparing her next exhibition, Making an Impression: Immigrant Printing in Chicago, which is free and open to the public from December 12, 2024 to March 29, 2025. She holds a Ph.D. in English Language and Literature from University of London and an M.S. in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Jill joins Sevy to talk about filling the gaps of print history with artifacts spanning 15th century incunables to 21st century artist books. They also discuss what the Newberry’s vast archives can offer both students and professionals today, including the stuff you can’t learn online. So, you know — the good stuff. Just don't try to check out Popol Vuh.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
Elaine Lopez is an independent designer and educator who is an Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the BFA in Communication Design program at Parsons School of Design in New York City. At her studio, LoPress Press, Elaine collaborates with cultural and academic institutions to explore the intersection of culture, identity, and equity within the field of design. She holds a BFA from the University of Florida and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design — both in Graphic Design.
Elaine joins Sevy to talk about navigating the industry as a first-generation Cuban American woman, what a design education can offer students in our technological age, and why the current state of human-centered design is… complicated.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
Caryl Pagel is a poet, editor, and author of four books, most recently Free Clean Fill Dirt (University of Akron Press, 2022). She is co-founder, editor, and publisher at independent American house Rescue Press, as well as director of the Cleveland State University Poetry Center’s NEOMFA program. Caryl holds a BA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and MFAs from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop.
Caryl joins Sevy to talk about the (mostly) invisible art of editing — including her philosophy of "generative publishing," book-making as a social practice, and what haircuts have in common with design.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
David Wallace Haskins is an interdisciplinary artist using the elements of light, space, time, and sound to create experiential interventions. He is founder and principal at DWH Studio, where he collaborates with specialists and technicians to create his work. Since 2021, David has been an artist-in-residence at Edith Farnsworth House, where his exhibition Landscape + Light re-contextualizes Mies van der Rohe's celebrated architecture as a study of immediacy.
David joins Sevy to talk about communicating without language, finding his way as an autodidact creative from Blockbuster to his first museum show, and how we can supercharge our awareness by embracing the silence around us — in form and in function.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
Bud Rodecker explores the space between logical constraints and formal play. He is founder and design director at Span, a Chicago-based studio crossing the boundaries of communication design in all mediums. He is a former president of the Society of Typographic Arts, and he is a board member of the Chicago Design Museum.
Bud joins Sevy to talk about how an old Photoshop demo changed his life, the role designers play in social and environmental justice, and important lessons he's learned since working his way up from intern to partner and then founder — including the secret to winning clients over.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
Nermin Moufti is a Syrian-born, Saudi-raised designer and creative director who works in both English and Arabic, re-invigorating local to global brands while leading boundary-breaking campaigns for clients like Planned Parenthood, the Type Directors Club, Netflix, StockX, and more. Currently, Nermin is a co-founder of Field of Practice, a women- and member-owned creative studio founded in 2020 that designs for change.
Nermin joins Sevy to discuss how design can drive positive social outcomes through co-creation strategies, what the teachings of a Zen sensei have to do with visual communication, and what a brief stint in comedy taught her about living life as a designer.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
Ryan Ken is an actor and two-time Emmy Award-winning television writer at Last Week Tonight with John Oliver who uses an unconventional comedic perspective to comment on social issues, film, television, politics, and pop culture.
Ryan joins Sevy to talk about lessons learned from collaborations with designers, life before (and after) going viral online, and how to nurture your creative practice, and protect it, without burning out.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago's oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
Alex Belardo Kostiw gives shape to stories. She is a Visiting Artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a 2023-2024 Hatch Artist-in-Residence, a Teaching Artist at Spudnik Press, and she makes at her self-publishing practice Tenderly.
Alex joins Sevy to talk all things bookmaking and then some, including how her creative development began as a child growing up in a crowded Bronx, her discovery of the intentionally ambiguous "poetry comic" in college, and what good home cooking can teach us about visual art — even though most of that stuff had to be cut due to a hilarious misunderstanding.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.
Ellen Lupton is a designer, writer, and educator. She serves as the Betty Cooke and William O. Steinmetz Design Chair of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and is Curator Emerita at Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City.
Ellen joins Sevy to celebrate the third edition of her classic guide to typography: Thinking with Type (Princeton Architectural Press, 2024). They discuss the 21st century evolution of communication design, why it’s important to study writing systems you may never even use, and how Ellen’s unusual upbringing set her on the multidisciplinary path she still walks today.
User Journey w/ Sevy is presented by the Society of Typographic Arts, Chicago’s oldest professional association for design. Learn more at userjourney.show.