For the past year and a half, Albuquerque's beloved dance studio Keshet has been running a new arm of operations: the Keshet Ideas and Innovation Center (KIIC), a nonprofit arts incubator providing education, mentorship and rental space opportunities to local artists. KIIC's Program Coordinator Emily Dunkin and its Communications Director Carolyn Tobias joined us in the Pyragraph studio to talk about the resources they offer to creatives of all kinds—not just dancers—simultaneously benefiting both the artists themselves and our local creative economy.

Also on the podcast is George Kenefic, Director of Enterprise at The Loan Fund, a community development financial institution that offers microloans to artists and other small businesses to help them grow. 

We talked about the resources that artists need, whether artists really are such bad businesspeople after all, how small loans can help creative businesses go to the next level, and more.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editor Josh Stuyvesant.

Roberto Appicciafoco turned his love for film into a career as a film festival organizer and curator, most notably as the Founder and Festival Director of the Southwest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival (SWGLFF). On the eve of the 13th annual fest, running Oct. 9 to 18 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Roberto joins us in the Pyragraph Studio for our first Self-Employed Happy Hour of the Fall 2015 season! We chat about how he got started in film festivals, the joys of dealing with taxes when you're self-employed, how SWGLFF fits into the broader circles of film festivals, how emerging filmmakers can up their chances of success on the festival circuit, and a whole lot more.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Creative Director Clarke Condé.

Just in time for summer vacay, we wrap our second season of Self-Employed Happy Hour by inviting all our guests from this season (plus a few more) and popping open the bubbly for a Season Finale & Awkward Office Party. We're joined by Ashlee Renz-Hotz, Roxanne Blair, Jared Tarbell, Erin Phillips, Jesse Littlebird, Clarke Conde and comedian Rusty Rutherford. We chat about the latest developments with Creative Mornings in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, the Albuquerque Game Developers Guild, Tricklock Company, the state of publishing in New Mexico and more!

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editors Jeremy Kinter and Josh Stuyvesant.

Have a great summer and check back in the fall for new episodes!

Sisters Antonia and Cherie Montoya are like a microcosm of creative self-employment. Antonia is the founder of Our Gratitude Collective, runs a wellness and gratitude coaching business, and has played music both solo and in various band projects for many years. Cherie is the owner of Farm & Table, a restaurant and farm in Albuquerque's bucolic North Valley that also serves as an unofficial center for a community passionate about locally grown food and artisan food-makers.

Both Antonia and Cherie are active in the local business community and regularly host or participate in events promoting both personal wellness and healthy local economies. We were thrilled to have them on the podcast to talk about all these interesting angles and connections between creativity, community, wellness, food, art, family and culture.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editors Jeremy Kinter and Josh Stuyvesant. 

Unless you've been living under a rock, you've probably noticed there's an awful lot of buzz around creative industries and entrepreneurship. As Director of Programs for the business accelerator Creative Startups, Roxanne Blair is squarely in the middle of this phenomenon. She joins us in the Pyragraph studio to talk about the best strategies for building creative industries, what kind of support artists need to build their ventures, and what Creative Startups offers growth-oriented creative firms.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editor Josh Stuyvesant.

Comedy lovers in Albuquerque may know him as their favorite and funniest baby in diapers, but Rusty Rutherford has a few other acts up his sleeve. Besides doing stand-up comedy and organizing/hosting events like the Third Thursday Comedy Contest at Tractor Brewing, Rusty also recently founded Duke City Dream Lab, a photo, video, and recording studio created to help teens and artists of all ages channel their creative energies and learn new media skills.

We had a swell time chatting with Rusty in the Pyragraph studios about the comedy scene in Albuquerque, how twisted you really need to be to become a comedian, and what Duke City Dream Lab does for the community.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editor Jeremy Kinter.

As a freelance graphic designer and principal of Design5sixty4, Lori Patton knows her way around design. In addition she is President of AIGA New Mexico, the professional association for designers in the state, so Lori has excellent insight into what it takes to make it in the saturated design industry. She joins us in the Pyragraph studio to talk about getting started in graphic design, getting and keeping clients, dealing with software and technology, the burgeoning creative economy in New Mexico and a whole lot more.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editors Josh Stuyvesant and Jeremy Kinter.

This week's podcast is a little different. Pyragraph Publisher and Editor Peri Pakroo was deep in No Rooz mode, getting ready for Persian New Year—which is today, March 20 at 4:45pm MT. (Happy new year everyone!) So Peri turned hosting duties over to Contributing Editors Jeremy Kinter and Josh Stuyvesant who did a late-night, after-hours special edition. Starting at 1:19am, full of gin and Tractor beer, Josh and Jeremy talked about things they always talk about and called it Self-Employed Happy Hour.

As creative partners, co-owners of an Albuquerque-centric arts cooperative, and up-and-coming writers, Josh and Jeremy's topics of conversation cover: when we're allowed to call ourselves writers, wearing many hats, commiserating over the writer's hooching habits, and the sometimes symbiotic, sometimes predatory relationship one has with his/her audience.

"When most people are growing up, they don't say to themselves, 'I'm going to work in a brewery some day!'" This observation from Skye Devore (who clearly didn't watch "Laverne and Shirley" as a wee lass) was true for herself, yet by various twists and turns she is now the co-owner of Tractor Brewing Company, one of New Mexico's most beloved craft brewing operations. Skye joins us to share how she fell into the brewing industry, how Tractor plays an active part in supporting arts and culture in Albuquerque, why craft brewing is so hot in New Mexico, and what it takes to get into brewing as a business. She is joined by special guests General Manager Alana Jones, and Laboratory/QC Manager Monica Mondragon, both of Santa Fe Brewing Company.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editor Jeremy Kinter and Outreach Director Cara Tolino.

During the month of March 2015, more than 70 events will take place in Albuquerque and Santa Fe as part of the 10th annual Women & Creativity, an event celebrating creative women across the spectrum. The event was founded by arts consultant Shelle Sanchez and is co-coordinated by Valerie Martinez of Little Globe, and Julia Mandeville of Harwood Art Center, who all joined us in the Pyragraph studio to share details of the month's events and activities. Kristi Welton-Kidder also joined us to talk about how her group Women in Technology is participating in the month's events and representing women who pursue creativity through engineering, programming and other tech-based angles.

We had a great talk about the unique ways that women approach creative pursuits, how to build professional opportunities for creative women (and men) in New Mexico, and how to celebrate and support creative women year-round.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph's Outreach Manager Cara Tolino. 

Freshly home from Japan, photographer Wes Naman joins us with his assistant photographer Joy Godfrey to help us kick off Thursday morning with mimosas aplenty and the backstories behind some of their most excellent photographic adventures and projects. Besides sharing the insanity of their recent TV appearance in Tokyo, Wes and Joy chat about their 505 Faces project, going viral with his invisible tape series, and what it means to pay your dues as a freelancer.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editor Josh Stuyvesant.

New York-based actor and writer Ashlee Renz-Hotz is neck-deep in creative work. She joined us in the Pyragraph studio to chat about her work on stage and in film, her post-apocalpytic Greek tragedy screenplay, living and studying in England and Australia, and whether 50 Shades of Grey is worth the hype. We didn't let her leave without promising to write more about the actor/writer's life for Pyragraph!

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editors Josh Stuyvesant and Jeremy Kinter.

You may or may not know that Self-Employed Happy Hour is produced by Pyragraph, an online creative career magazine for creatives worldwide. It's Pyragraph's second birthday, so we thought it would be a grand idea for Pyragraph's founder Peri Pakroo to chat with the other editors and core Pyragraph folks about Pyragraph's first two years, and how Peri found herself launching an online magazine after a couple decades working in publishing.

We also talk about Albuquerque's burgeoning creative scene, the challenges of online publishing, struggling to untangle TinyPass and MailChimp, whether Pomplamoose are sellouts, and so much more!

Peri is joined by Pyragraph editors Sage Harrington, Josh Stuyvesant and Jeremy Kinter; Outreach Manager Cara Tolino, Creative Resident Mary Holyoke, and JAK Media owners/photographers Kendra Crooks and Austin Madrid.

Zach Sutton has built his professional photography business not just on crack photog skills, but by becoming an in-demand writer and speaker about photography as well. We share mimosas and burritos with Zach at the Pyragraph studio to talk about his client work, his writing gig at Fstoppers, his workshops across the US, and how he fits it all together.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editors Josh Stuyvesant and Jeremy Kinter.

Actor MorningStar Angeline and Production Designer Kevin Pierce join us in the Pyragraph studio to chat about their film Drunktown's Finest, about life in and around Gallup, New Mexico. Writer and director Sydney Freeland calls in from Sundance to talk about the long screenwriting process and how she eventually scored Robert Redford as an Executive Producer.

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editor Josh Stuyvesant and Outreach Manager Cara Tolino.

The 15th annual Revolutions International Theater Festival, put on by Tricklock Company, is just getting underway, bringing incredible productions from all around the world to Albuquerque for a 3-week orgy of theater! Tricklock's Hannah Kauffmann, Erin Phillips and Shastyn Friedman come to the Pyragraph studio to tell us all about it—from the history of the festival to the logistics of getting everyone here, to the inevitable mental health breakdowns in trying to pull off an event of this magnitude. The mimosas were flowing and it was a great way to kick off Self-Employed Happy Hour's second season with Pyragraph!

Host Peri Pakroo is joined by Pyragraph Contributing Editors Josh Stuyvesant and Jeremy Kinter.