JK Fowler is a freelance writer and audio engineer currently living in Brooklyn, NY.
He lived in Lesotho for a few years and in Cape Town, South Africa for two years following that while completing a semester of study in US and South Africa comparative whiteness studies in the Sociology department at the University of Cape Town. Not long after he returned to the States, he wrote, designed and published a poetry book compiling poems written while in South Africa entitled Argot. In mid-May he traveled to New York City, camped out in Harlem on a whim and not long after, Brooklyn, where he has remained until now with a few more stints in Cape Town mixed in.
He obtained his M.A. in International Affairs at The New School with a thesis entitled Sensorical Spatial which uses a phenomenological approach to blur the lines between physical spaces (the "inanimate") and the human being or the "animate" by focusing in on three sites: the cubicle, Bellevue Hospital, and development organizations with key movements interspersed throughout. He will be presenting the Bellevue Hospital section of the project at the 6th Annual Joint University of Liverpool Management School and Keele University Institute for Public Policy and Management Symposium on Current Developments in Ethnographic Research in the Social and Management Sciences in September 2011 at Cardiff Business School in the UK.
In addition to The Mantle, he maintains a site of flash and short fiction, poetry and articles, and academic papers at www.jkfowler.com and a compilation of past and in-process works, photography and audio interviews at www.roaminghills.com.
Articles
JK's Blog
Passages on the Verge
There is a lot to be said for letting people speak, to minimize one's role as interviewer to that of listener. It is my belief that every person has a story and all too often, people are not given the means nor the time to tell these stories. Passages on the Verge is that platform, a platform dedicated to bringing to the fore the voices of those not yet heard, a platform dedicated to allowing for previously-heard voices to be heard perhaps in a different way, a platform for allowing people to speak for extended periods of time against the modern drive for soundbites and quick-fixes. The world is a complicated place and we are complex and nuanced creatures, not able to be encapsulated within a few minutes, not able to be drawn through harshly-cut lines of editorial will. Through opening wide a place for organic conversations to occur for as long as they must occur in natural syncopation to the interactive nature of speech, Passages on the Verge resides as a project of long-form interviews or conversations with some really fascinating and intelligent individuals from all walks of life. And occasionally, you might find a few written pieces but for a full glimpse into that part of my schizo personality, check out www.jkfowler.com or www.roaminghills.com. Thanks for listening and hoping to bring you a continual flow of some amazing voices from and for the verge.
The map below creates a visual, international web of where the individual's interviewed are from as well as where they now live and work. No locations are exact of course to protect those involved, but it will be an increasingly interesting visual to watch as it evolves.
View Passages on the Verge in a larger map
