Dear Seekers

Dear Seekers is a conversation show about creative lives, and it is in no hurry to get to the achievements. Sasha, who introduces herself as a former TV news reporter, usually starts further back, with family, early work and the moment something clicked. Then she lets the guest talk. The stories run long and circle back, and the meaning tends to come afterward, in a short reflective pause where she names what she has just heard. Several episodes are recorded in the guest's home, and photographs from those visits are posted on the show's website. The guests include writers, editors and people who have built something of their own. Erin Klassen, a Toronto-based writer and independent publisher, recalls a zine she made with an illustrator friend: a list of the funny and sad things she does to get through a bad day. Two items on that list are a much-rewatched musical episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and a phone playing folk music from a glass vase at the edge of the bath, and the show makes room for exactly that kind of detail. Her conversation also turns to intuition, and why, if everyone has it, people still end up struggling. Randi Bergman remembers angling for invitations to her first New York Fashion Week, and going to showrooms to see collections up close. Danielle Suppa tells the origin story of Souvenir, which she started with a partner, and calls the night they set up their first pop-up one of her favorite memories. Not every turn is light. Daniela Bosco describes an illness that began like a bad cold and grew serious enough that surgery was discussed, and she says she might not have survived without her mother there. The same conversation widens into work. Sasha and Daniela pick apart the saying that loving your job means you never work a day, and Daniela talks about growing up as the daughter of immigrants, in a home where work was always the subject. Money gets the same frankness. In 'The Write Way to Mother: Good Mom on Paper', which has two guests, one explains that writing full-time before Oscar was born was possible partly because of a marriage, and Sasha asks whether full-time meant financially or also for practice and joy. The show moves from dry humor to fear and recovery without losing its warmth. The sign-off, 'happy seeking', closes these conversations on a gentle note. The Daniela Bosco episode is a good place to start, because it covers the show's full range in one conversation, from a health scare to an argument about work. The payoff is hearing how a life came together, not tips on building one.