Book Fight: Recent Episodes
Mike Ingram and Tom McAllister
A podcast about books, writing, reading, and raccoons. Hosted by Mike Ingram and Tom McAllister, editors at Barrelhouse Magazine and authors of fiction and creative nonfiction. Winner of a 2015 Philadelphia Geek Award for Best Streaming Media Project. You don't need to read the books to enjoy the show!
Well, friends, here it is. After 13 years, the Book Fight podcast is finally riding off into the sunset. Join us for one final episode, as we look back at what we've learned, read some listener tributes, and take our last trip to Appelation Station.
Thanks, as always, for listening. It's been a great ride! I don't think either of us imagined, when we recorded our very first episode back in April 2012, that the show would reach so many people, allow us to chat with so many great authors, and make so many new friends along the way.
We're joined by Elisa Gabbert (Any Person is the Only Self, Normal Distance) to discuss E.M. Forster's 1924 novel A Passage to India, and also to speculate wildly about why this was the last novel Forster ever wrote.
You can find selections of Gabbert's work (and links to buy her books) on her website: http://www.elisagabbert.com/
And if you like our podcast, and want more of it in your life, you can get access to a huge trove of bonus episodes on our Patreon, for only $5 a month: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
We're joined by Sam Ashworth (The Death and Life of August Sweeney) to talk about the ultimate ending: death. Our book this week is Julian Barnes' 2008 memoir about death and dying, Nothing to Be Frightened Of. We discuss ruminative books, and whether all narratives need to have an arc. Plus: the triumphant return of Judge a Book By Its Cover.
Thanks, as always, for listening! If you like the show, and would like some more Book Fight in your life, you can join our Patreon for just $5 a month: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
To keep up with Sam, or to learn more about his work: https://www.samuelashworth.com/
No guest this week, as we wanted to do an episode with just the two of us, here at the mid-point of our final season. For our reading, we dive into A Clockwork Orange, which Mike had somehow never read. Meanwhile, not only had Tom read it, he wrote a paper about its ending, back in his undergrad days, which by some miracle (or anal-retentiveness?) he still has a copy of.
Also this week: one final installment of Fan Fiction Corner. How has AI affected the fanfic community? Should politics be part of fanfiction? And can a time-traveling Toby Maguire prevent the Kennedy assassination?
Thanks, as always, for listening. We've got a few more guest episodes this season, then a final episode that'll just be the two of us. We're also continuing to post bonus content on our Patreon, if you need more Book Fight in your life. Just $5 a month gets you access to loads of bonus content from the last several years: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
We're joined one last time by fan favorite Katherine Hill (A Short Move) to talk about Nora Ephron's 1983 novel Heartburn, a thinly veiled account of the author's divorce from Carl Bernstein. Specifically: Why does it seem like everyone is reading this book right now? And is it somehow the godmother of the recent spate of Millenial divorce books?
Also discussed: humor as a coping mechanism, voice-driven novels, recipes in fiction, and why are people on Goodreads mad at Nora Ephron?
If you're enjoying the show, and would like more of it, check out our Patreon, where we post bonus episodes every two weeks (and where you'll have access to a veritable treasure trove of previous episodes, for a measley $5 a month): https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
A season of endings, but also beginnings: our first Barbara Pym! The celebrated British novelist had a bit of a career slump; after publishing six novels between 1950 and 1961, she couldn't find a home for her seventh, and didn't publish anything for more than a decade. Then, in 1977, Quartet in Autumn appeared, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. A true comeback victory.
We chose this book because it deals with a different kind of ending: retirement. Four aging office workers are on their way out, and each is sad in their own way. The book's kind of a bummer, but also funny? Like a certain podcast you all know and love.
We're joined by frequest guest Dave Housley, author of several sad/funny novels, including one about an office.
If you're a fan of the show, and want more of it in your life, we're still posting new episodes every two weeks to our Patreon. Five bucks a month also gets you access to a pretty deep back catalog, including our Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
The problem with writing very short stories is that it forces you to write more endings, which are the hardest part! At least that's our opinion. But we bring on writer and Barrelhouse fiction editor Christopher Gonzalez (I'm Not Hungry But I Could Eat, 2021) to school us in how to stick the landing on flash fiction.
Chris chose four very different flash pieces for us to read, all of which are available for free online:
-Andy Lopez, "How Filipino of Us" (from Split Lip)
-Deesha Philyaw, "Love 1992: A Catechism)" (from Fractured Lit)
-Amy Stuber, "Only a Little Bit Less Than I Hate Myself" (from Longleaf Review)
-Julian Martinez, "Cartoons" (from HAD)
Also in this episode: We review what's going on in shorts (short pants, that is), which includes some conflicting reports in terms of inseam lengths. And do shorts get longer as the government becomes more authoritarian? It's a theory, apparently.
We kick off the final season of Book Fight with a guest-free episode--like the old days! Our reading this week is Geoff Dyer's 2022 book The Last Days of Roger Federer, and Other Endings. Which seemed thematically appropriate as we come to our own ending (of the podcast; we're not dying or anything).
It's that time of year again: our annual holiday episode, where we invite several members of the Barrelhouse editorial team to read and discuss a very sexy holiday-themed novel. This year's book is SKRUJ: Holidate with an Alien, by bestselling author Honey Phillips. The book is a retelling, of a sort, of the Dickens Christmas classic, but starring a grumpy alien man with a weird (and gigantic) penis, and his human lover.
Our guests this year include: Chris Gonzalez, Becky Barnard, Dave Housley, Erin Fitzgerald, and first-timer Christina Beasley. Plus our regular hosts, Mike Ingram and Tom McAllister.
Note: This will be the last episode of the podcast on the regular feed for a spell, while we work on our next season. But we'll continue to post new episodes for our Patreon subscribers: for $5/month, you can get those episodes, plus access to our entire back catalog. https://www.patreon.com/c/bookfight
Thanks for listening, and happy holidays!
We wrap up our noir season with one final episode, this one discussing the 1963 Peter Sellers movie The Pink Panther, and the series more generally, which spoofed many of the tropes of the noir/detective genres. We also look back at the season--what we learned from diving into the noir genre, and our favorite books.
If you like this episode, we've been doing an entire series on noir films over on our Patreon, which you can access for just $5/month. We'll also keep posting episodes over there in the new year, leading up to our next season of regular episodes: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
We welcome Nadira Goffe (culture writer for Slate) to talk about a Black, Southern noir from S.A. Cosby. We learn about Nadira's love of the Fast and the Furious franchise, her fear of actual driving, and her mixed feelings about an over-the-top metaphor. Plus: Mike gets pedantic about dialogue tags, and Tom realizes there's a limit to how many car-chase sequences he's willing to read in a novel. Vroom vroom!
Note: this is the eighth (and final) episode in our noir-themed season, but there's no reason you need to listen to the episodes in order.
If you're enjoying the podcast, and want to help support it (while getting yourself some sweet, sweet bonus content) please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5 a month you get two monthly episodes, which could also help tide you over until our next season: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
As always, thanks for listening!
We welcome back best-selling crime novelist Tod Goldberg to talk about one of his favorite books, by one of his favorite authors. Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel was the basis for the 2012 film of the same name, which netted Jennifer Lawrence an Oscar nomination at the age of 20. The movie is a pretty faithful adaptation of the novel, though the book's musical language and rich detail make it worth a read even for those who've seen the film.
We talk about the book's fresh take on a familiar story structure--the "hero's quest"--and how it both fits and doesn't within the "crime" genre. We also talk to Tod about his own work, how he develops the plots of his novels, why he no longer gives readings, and lots more. Including our first-ever Book Fight blind item!
You can learn more about Tod, and his many books, at his website: https://todgoldberg.com/
And check out the Hannukah noir anthology he recently edited for Penguin Random House, Eight Very Bad Nights.
Thanks for listening!
We're joined by novelist and high-school music teacher Daniel DiFranco (Panic Years, Devil on My Trail) to discuss the Margaret Millar novel Do Evil in Return, a staple of the noir genre. We talk about the line between serious and campy, how to move plot forward in a novel, and the difficulty of endings.
For more about our guest, including where to find his books, check out his website: http://www.danieldifranco.com/
If you like our podcast, and would like more of it in your life, $5 gets you a couple bonus episodes each month plus access to our huge backlog of bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
Note: This episode is part of our ongoing season on noir novels, but you don't need to listen to the episodes in order, and you don't need to read the books to enjoy the discussion.
We welcome Joanna Pearson (author, most recently, of Bright and Tender Dark), who makes the case that we should put Mary Gaitskill's short stories in the "noir" category--or at least mark them as noir-adjacent. We discuss two specific Gaitskill stories, "The Other Place" and "The Girl on the Plane," as well as the particular darkness of the Gaitskill universe.
We also talk with Joanna about readers' expectations for genre books, and what it's been like to have her own novel placed in various genre boxes. Plus: what's the right way to organize one's bookshelves?
To learn more about Joanna, and her work, visit her website: https://www.joanna-pearson.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it in your life, subscribe to our Patreon ($5) to get two bonus episodes each month: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
We're joined by Steph Cha (author of Your House Will Pay) to talk about a famous California hardboiled novel none of us had ever read. What will it took us about tramps, insurance fraud, and the relative difficulty of staging a fake car-related murder? And what's the deal with that postman, with his infernal ringing?
Steph, who has written several acclaimed crime novels herself, helps us to understand the genre we're exploring this season, and its evolution over time.
To learn more about our guest, and her work, check out her website: http://stephcha.com/
If you like our podcast, and would like to help support it--plus get access to two bonus episodes every month--check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
(Note: this is the 4th episode in our Noir season, but there's no reason you need to listen to them in order. Also, you don't need to read the book to enjoy the show.)
We're joined by comedian and writer Charlie Demers to discuss a novel that the famous crime writer Donald Westlake finished in the early '80s but which wasn't published until after his death. At the time, he apparently worried that the plot--about a famous comedian kidnapped by a Weather Underground-style group of revolutionaries--was too similar to the Martin Scoresese movie The King of Comedy.
We talk about the book's take on politics and comedy, which may have some echoes in our current cultural moment. And also Charlie's relationship to these characters, since he's a stand-up comedian and someone who's quite active in progressive politics. Plus: beatniks, Bob Hope, the fragmentation of popular culture, and our pitch for a show about a detective with ADHD.
To learn more about Charlie, and follow his work, visit his website: https://www.charliedemers.com/
If you like our podcast, and want to exchange a few bucks for two montly bonus episodes, check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
Note: This is the 3rd episode in our Noir season, but you don't need to listen to the episodes in order to enjoy them.
The 1947 Dorothy Hughes novel In a Lonely Place is considered a hallmark of the noir genre, and also something of a feminist reimagining of those genre's tropes. We're joined by Isaac Butler (author of The Method: How the 20th Century Learned to Act) to talk about some of the book's narrative tricks, including an unreliable third-person narrator, and how it subverts the genre's "femme fatale" trope, among others. Plus: What made Dorothy Hughes think that 'Brub' was a good name for a character?
In the second half of the show, we learn about Isaac's relationship to Halloween costumes, which Muppet could play a hardboiled cop, and why Isaac thinks he's too old to read Slaughterhoue Five for the first time.
If you like the podcast, consider joining our Patreon. For $5 a month, you get two bonus episodes, plus access to our entire back catalog of bonus content. During our current season, we're watching and discussing noir films, both classics and newer entries to the canon. https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
Find Isaac on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theisaacbutler/
Or on Blue Sky: https://bsky.app/profile/isaacbutler.bsky.social
You can subscribe to Mike's Substack (for free): https://mikeingram.substack.com/
Anc check out the newly revamped Barrelhouse newsletter, which now features an original monthly essay (writers writing about their non-writing obsessions): https://www.barrelhousemag.com/ (scroll down to the bottom of the page)
Thanks, as always, for listening!
Note: This is the second episode in our Noir season. But there's no reason you have to listen to the episodes in order.
We're back! This episode kicks off a new season of the podcast, and this one's all about noir. In our first installment, guest Sarah Weinman (author of Scoundrel, and The Real Lolita) joins us to discuss a Patricia Highsmith novel, The Blunderer, about a rather hapless man who, despite not actually killing his wife, manages to convince nearly everyone that he has.
If you like the show, and want more of it in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon, where during this season we'll be watching a series of noir and neo-noir films, including Double Indemnity, The Third Man, Blade Runner, and more. Five bucks a month gets you those bonus episodes, plus access to our entire back catalog of bonus material: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
In the final episode of our "marriage plot" season, we welcome fan favorite Dave Housley (author, most recently, of The Other Ones, and founding editor of Barrelhouse Magazine) to talk about a book that updated the 19th-century marriage plot novel for the 1990s: Helen Fielding's Bridget Jones's Diary.
Dave had seen the movie version of the novel multiple times. But none of us had ever read the novel, which began as a jokey column in a London newspaper. We talk about the book's quirky voice, which of its jokes still land in 2024, and whether our culture's attitudes toward diet and body image have changed significantly in the last few decades. Plus: Dave's advice to Mike for marital harmony, and is author Matthew Quick part of the sprawling QAnon conspiracy?
You can learn more about Dave, and his books, at his website: https://housleydave.com/. And keep up with all things Barrelhouse here: https://www.barrelhousemag.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This is the eighth and final episode in our "marriage plot" season, which means we'll be taking a break until our next season drops, sometime in the fall. But we'll continue to post new episodes every two weeks on our Patreon, including our ongoing Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, and our deep dive into the fictional portrayal of writers in movies and TV shows. If you have ideas for Patreon episodes, please don't hesitate to reach out!
And, as always, thanks for listening!
We couldn't do a season on "the marriage plot" in literature without reading the Jeffrey Eugenides novel that's literally titled The Marriage Plot. Guest Lucas Mann (author, most recently, of the essay collected Attachments, and co-owner of Riffraff Bookstore and Bar in Providence, Rhode Island) joins us to discuss Eugenides' novel, which contains a "marriage plot" while also being a kind of meta-commentary on marriage plots. Plus: Is the book's clinically depressed, bandana-wearing character meant to be David Foster Wallace? How does Lucas employ "power poses" to sell books? And is there anything worse than a cash-bar wedding?
You can find more info about Lucas, including where to read his work and how to buy his books, at his website: https://www.lucasmann.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it in your life--two bonus episodes each and every month--consider chipping in $5 to our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Note: This episode is the 7th of 8 in our Marriage Plot season (not that you need to listen to them in order!). After next week's episode we'll be taking a break, but we'll continue to post new episodes every other week on our Patreon feed.
Poet and novelist Beth Ann Fennelly (Heating & Cooling, The Tilted World) joins us to talk about an unconventional love story, Harrison Scott Key's How to Stay Married: The Most Insane Love Story Ever Told. We talk about learning life lessons from memoirs, how to write about difficult relationships--especially when you're still in them--and Beth Ann's experience of writing a novel collaboratively with her husband. Plus: Mike's pre-marriage angst about wedding rental companies, and why it costs so much to rent a chair.
We continue our "marriage plot" season with guest Curtis Sittenfeld (Prep, American Wife, Romantic Comedy) who talks us through one of her favorite Alice Munro stories, why she admires it, and how it's influenced her own work. Plus: Are trains romantic? Is some writing trying too hard to be sexy? And what's the ideal bathroom situation for a marriage?
For more about Curtis, and her books, visit her website: https://curtissittenfeld.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it in your life, consider joining our Patreon, where $5/month gets you lots of bonus content, and helps support the show more generally: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
Our "marriage plot" season continues, but with a twist: on this episode, novelist Peter Ho Davies introduces us to "the parent plot," which he argues is a contemporary successor to all those 19th-century novels about choosing a mate. For many, becoming a parent is not only one of life's biggest choices, but also a cultural marker of adult responsibility and growing up. As an example, we dive into Ben Lerner's 2014 novel, 10:04, about a writer trying to finish his next book and also decide whether to father a child with his platonic best friend.
To learn more about Davies, and his many wonderful, widely-celebrated books, you can visit his website: http://peterhodavies.com/
If you like our podcast, and want to support it--plus get access to twice-monthly bonus episodes--please consider subscribing to our Patreon, for just $5 a month: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
Our season on "the marriage plot" continues, with author Tyrese Coleman (How to Sit) joining us to talk about the first book in the Outlander series, which is one of the most popular historical fantasy romance novels ever written. She tries to help us understand why people find it sexy, rather than tedious. We also talk about the book's relationship to various genre tropes, and Ty tells us about the time she got banned from a Facebook fan group for suggesting some of the novel's characters were a little racist.
You can keep up with Tyrese, and her writing, at her website: https://tyresecoleman.com/
If you're enjoying our podcast, and want more of it in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon, where $5 a month gets you two monthly bonus episodes, and access to our entire back catalog: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
Our "marriage plot" season continues, with freelance writer and podcaster Catherine Nichols joining us to talk about the "least fun" Bronte sister, and her novel about what happens when you marry a drunken frat boy (or whatever the 19th-century equivalent of a frat was).
Check out Catherine's podcast, Lit Century, in which she and author Sandra Newman read through the 20th century, one year at a time: https://lithub.com/author/litcentury/
If you're enjoying our show, and would like more of it, subscribe to our Patreon for just $5 a month, which gets you two monthly bonus episodes (and access to a whole host of old episodes): https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
We kick off our new, 8-episode season on "the marriage plot" in literature with guest Adelle Waldman (The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Help Wanted) talking to us about one of her favorite authors, Jane Austen.
You can learn more about Adelle and her books at her website: https://adellewaldman.com/
If you like the podcast, and want more of it in your life, join our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
We welcome writer and editor Michael Tager (Mason Jar Press; Pop Culture Poetry: The Definitive Collection ) to talk about Mindy Kaling's essay collection Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Tager read Kaling's book during a period when he was reading a lot of memoirs and essay collections by comedians, including books by Tina Fey and Chelsea Handler. He talks about what made Kaling's stand out, and how his usual reading habits were interrupted by fatherhood.
You can learn more about Tager's writing and editing projects, including his forthcoming book, at his website: http://www.michaelbtager.com/
If you like our podcast, and would like more of it in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, where $5 a month gets you two monthly bonus episodes, plus access to our entire back catalog: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
We're joined by Sal Pane--author, most recently, of the short story collection The Neorealist in Winter (winner of the 2002 Autumn House fiction prize) to discuss a pair of novellas by Italian writer Natalia Ginzburg. Plus: writing for video games, surviving winter, and cuffing season.
For more about Sal, and his books, visit his website: https://salvatore-pane.com/
If you'd like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon, where $5 gets you two bonus episodes each month, including throughout our upcoming hiatus: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
It's a fan favorite every year: we choose a (possibly terrible) Christmas novel, and we invite some of our fellow Barrelhouse editors on to discuss it. This year the book was A Christmas Memory, by the "king of Christmas fiction," Richard Paul Evans. And our guests include Dave Housley, Becky Barnard, Chris Gonzalez, and Joe Killiany!
Is this book a heartwarming autobiographical tale about a young boy's friendship with an old African-American man in late-1960s Utah? Or is it the story of a little incel boy who will eventually grow up to found a creepy men's rights organization and compare the plight of white men to Jews in Nazi Germany?
Every year we try to take a "fun" trip to Christmas Town, and every year we somehow wind up mired in a terrible shit show. Feliz Navidad!
We're joined by Hannah Grieco (writer, editor, recent MFA finisher) to discuss the 2021 novel Nightbitch, by Rachel Yoder, and its depiction of an overworked mother gone feral.
You can order a copy of Already Gone, the anthology Hannah edited featuring 40 stories of people running away.
And if you enjoy the podcast, please consider supporting us by joining our Patreon, where $5 gets you two bonus episodes each month.
We're joined by Athena Dixon (The Loneliness Files, Tin House Books) to talk about a famous novel she hated when she was first made to read it, and why it spoke to her so much more strongly when she revisited it years later.
You can find links to order Athena's new essay collection via Tin House.
You can sign up for Mike's Substack here: https://mikeingram.substack.com/
And if you like our podcast, $5/month can help us keep it going, plus give you access to two bonus episodes each month (and a whole slew of back episodes): https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Author Adam O'Fallon Price (The Hotel Neversink) returns to talk about a great--if tough to categorize--Don Carpenter novel, Hard Rain Falling. We talk about the novel's many plot swerves, and the depth and surprise in its portrayal of complicated men. Plus: an update on Tom's fancy "white glove service" desk from West Elm.
For more on Adam, you can follow him on Twitter, or visit his website.
If you like the podcast, and want more of it in your life, we're doing two monthly bonus episodes for just $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Our guest this week is the series editor for The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and author of the book The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos. She had us read an Ursula LeGuin novella about a "generation ship," a science fiction trope involving humans traversing the universe in search of a new planetary home. Did she pick this specifically to troll Mike, who is on the record as a sci fi skeptic? It's entirely possible!
We talk about what drew Jaime to science writing, and why she considers herself an essayist, rather than a journalist. Also: what would be on our wish lists for a new planet? And will this LeGuin novella finally be the thing to win Mike over to the side of sci fi?
You can learn more about our guest, and her work, at her website: https://www.jaimegreen.net/
And if you like the podcast, and would like more of it in your life, consider joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by novelist James Hynes (Sparrow, The Lecturer's Tale, Next) to talk historical fiction. What are we looking for when we read a historical novel, and how is that different from what we want from actual history? How can writers put themselves inside the consciousness of someone living in a different time and place?
For our book this week, we read Light, by Eva Figes, a slim 1984 novel that recouts a day in the life of the artist Claude Monet. We also talked about Jim's new book, Sparrow, which tells the story of an enslaved Roman boy being raised in a brothel.
For all things James Hynes, visit his website here: http://www.jameshynes.com/
And if you like our podcast, and want more of it in your life (and want to help support its creation), check out our Patreon, where $5/month gets you access to bi-weekly bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're talking YA sports books with Defector Media editor/co-owner Dan McQuade, who gave us two classics of the genre to read. Hoop Crazy was written in 1950 by Clair Bee, who was also a college basketball coach of some renown. The book features a Gallant type who has to defend his school's top-ranked team from the dangers of both racism and the three-point shot. Dan's second selection was Iron Duke, a 1938 novel by New Yorker writer John Tunis, who never considered himself a children's author, despite the fact that nearly all his 24 books were marketed to children.
You can find out more about Defector Media here: https://defector.com/
And find Dan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhm
If you like the podcast, and want to help support it, plus get two bonus episodes every month, you can do that on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're always happy for an excuse to revisit the work of Denis Johnson, so when this week's guest said he wanted to discuss Johnson's novel Angels, we were all in. We talk to Nick about being a self-taught writer, the fine line between funny and sad, and why Johnson's portrayals of substance abuse and mental health struggles spoke to him.
You can pick up a copy of Nick's first book, a collection of stories, here.
If you like the podcast, consider joining our Patreon, where $5 a month gets you access to a huge treasure trove of exclusive bonus episodes.
We talk with the creators of Chill Subs, an online portal for all things literary publishing, about the state of lit mags, why finding places to submit your work is such a chore, and why they created a site that attempts to make it easier. Karina Kupp and Benjamin Davis joined us from Poland and Georgia, respectively, to chat about their own experiences in the lit world, and their ambitious plans for Chill Subs.
You can check out their site here: https://www.chillsubs.com/
You can read the Roxane Gay essay we discussed here: http://htmlgiant.com/random/a-rambling-poetry-fiction-literary-magazines-are-still-dying/ (that piece also links to the Ted Genoways essay Roxane's piece was responding to).
And if you like the podcast, and want to ensure it keeps existing in the world, please consider joining our Patreon, where a mere $5/month gets you access to regular bonus episodes, plus a treaure trove of past bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
We're joined by New York Times bestselling author Edan Lepucki, whose newest novel, Time's Mouth, is out now from Penguin Random House. We talk about her recent love of Larry McMurtry, why she'll never publish a short story collection, and why people need to get over their prudishness when it comes to literary depictions of sex.
You can find all things Edan at her website, including links to order her new book, and to subscribe to her Substack: https://www.edanlepucki.com/
If you like our podcast, and want to help support it, please consider joining our Patreon, where we release two bonus episodes each month: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
This week we're unlocking one of our bonus episodes, usually available only to Patreon subscribers. This is the inauguaral episode in our Summer of Shorts season, in which we're discussing both short stories and short pants. In this episode we take on a Ling Ma short story and also a pair of "conspiracy shorts" that are supposed to protect you from electromagnetic fields.
If you like the episode, and want to hear the rest of the Summer of Shorts season, you can subscribe to our Patreon for just five bucks: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
You can also read the Ling Ma story we talked about here, via the New Yorker site (if you have free articles left this month, or are a subscriber): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/11/peking-duck
We're joined by the author of SINK to talk about difficult memoirs, how various kinds of privilege play out in workshop, and why he likes writing that forces you to get a little lost.Â
Check out more from Joseph--and buy his book--via his website: https://www.josephearlthomas.net/
You can learn more about Blue Stoop Philly, including local literary events and course offerings, here: https://www.bluestoop.org/
And if you like our podcast, and want more of it in your life--including two bonus episodes each month--join our Patreon for just $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Irish author Mark O'Connell (A Thread of Violence, Notes from an Apocalypse, and To Be a Machine, which won the 2019 Rooney Prize for Irish literature) to discuss a John Banville novel, The Book of Evidence, a fictionalized account of a famous Irish murder. O'Connell's newest book is actually a nonfiction exploration of that same murder, which took place in the early 80s and made headlines around the country, in part because the murderer was a well-known Dublin socialite.
We talk to O'Connell about why he became so obsessed with that murder, his approach to writing and researching nonfiction, and why he's not worried about AI taking any of our jobs.
You can find more about O'Connell--and his books--at his website: https://mark-oconnell.com/
If you like our show, and want to support it, we're offering two bonus episodes each month for only $5. Most recently those include our ongoing Summer of Shorts, in which we read short stories and talk about short pants: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Sebastian Castillo--author, most recently, of SALMON--to discuss a very strange, and strangely funny, novel.Â
We're joined by Libby Cudmore--author of the "hipster mystery" novel The Big Rewind--to talk about her experiments in flash fiction, her relationship to genre, and why she loves Dave Housley's LOONEY.Â
You can find Libby on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/LibbyCudmore
And if you like our show, please consider joining the Patreon. Just five bucks a month gets you access to bonus episodes, including our special Summer of Shorts season: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by fiction writer Sarah Anne Strickley (Incendiary Devices) to talk about what it's like to be one half of a literary power couple. Plus a strange Brian Evenson novella, Sarah's path toward weirdness in her own fiction, and whether the Iowa Writers Workshop will live inside our heads forever.
Check out Sarah's work--including her new book--at her website: https://www.sarahannestrickley.com/
And if you'd like more Book Fight in your life, join our Patreon and get two bonus episodes a month, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by the founding editors of Great Place Books--Emily Adrian and Alex Higley--to talk about why they started a new press, and the kinds of books they're hoping to publish. We also discuss Rivka Galchen's short story, "How I Became a Vet," from a recent issue of The New Yorker.Â
You can learn more about Great Place Books here: https://www.greatplacebooks.com/
You can read "How I Became a Vet" here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2023/03/13/how-i-became-a-vet
Alex on Twitter: https://twitter.com/higley_alex
Emily on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adremily
Join our Patreon, support the show, and get access to fun bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Nic Brown, author of several books, most recently the memoir Bang Bang Crash, about his life as a rock drummer. Nic was also a grad school classmate of ours at the Iowa Writers Workshop, so we decided to revisit Stop-Time, the famous memoir by Frank Conroy, who was in his final years of running the program when we were students there.
You can find Nic (and his book) here: https://www.nicbrown.net/
If you like the show, and want more of it, you can Subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get exclusive bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by John Cotter, author of the memoir Losing Music, out this week from Milkweed Editions. The book is about an incurable inner-ear disorder that came on suddenly, and inexplicably, and how John has had to reckon with the gradual loss of his hearing, and the host of other issues that brings with it. John picked a famous Maxine Hong Kingston essay for us to read, one that offers an interesting model for writing about what we don't know.Â
You can learn more about John, and find links to purchase his book, here: https://johncotter.net/
If you like the show, and would like to exchange five of your hard-earned dollars for monthly bonus content--including access to the Book Fight Book Club--you can sign up for our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Return guest Christopher Gonzalez (I'm Not Hungry But I Could Eat) joins us to talk about the difference between gay stories and queer stories, writing long, and how not to be a creepy weirdo on Twitter.Â
You can read Alejandro Varela's story, "Carlitos in Charge," here, via Harper's: https://harpers.org/archive/2019/10/carlitos-in-charge-alejandro-varela/
Learn more about Chris and his work here: https://chris-gonzalez.com/
If you want to support the podcast, you can join our Patreon for just $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by fan favorite Laura McGrath, who is back on the show to help us understood the cultural phenomenon that is Colleen Hoover. McGrath, our colleague at Temple University, studies the business of literature--and teaches a class on best-sellers--but she hadn't read any Hoover until we forced her to do it for the podcast. So we hope you're appreciative, listeners!Â
You can keep up with Laura's scholarly work, including her forthcoming book, at her website, here: https://laurabmcgrath.com/.Â
You can follow her on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/lbmcgrath?lang=en
If you like the podcast, for just $5 you can get two bonus episodes a month, plus help support the show more generally: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We’re joined by the short story writer Art Taylor—winner of multiple Agatha awards, and author of two collections—to discuss an unconventionally structured story by Joyce Carol Oates. Art also teaches creative writing at George Mason University in Virginia, and we spend some time talking about how we approach structure with our students. You can find Art’s books, and everything else he’s up to, at his website: https://arttaylorwriter.com/
If you like the podcast, please consider supporting us! For only $5/month, you'll get two monthly bonus episodes, plus the satisfying feeling that comes from supporting the work you enjoy and would like to see more of in the world. More details here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Tod Goldberg, author of more than a dozen books, including Gangsterland and The Low Desert, to talk about what he learned about crime writing from Elmore Leonard. Plus, why are MFA programs still so often biased against writers of genre fiction? And what are the challenges of writing a series of novels with the same lead character?
You can learn more about Tod, and his books, here: https://todgoldberg.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by V.V. Ganeshananthan, author of two critically acclaimed novels, most recently Brotherless Night, which takes place during the Sri Lankan Civil War. Sugi is also a former grad school classmate of ours, and she began Brotherless Night back when all three of us were at Iowa together. So one thing we talk about is that process, and what it's like to write and rewrite a novel over more than fifteen years.
For our reading, Sugi chose Horacio Castellanos Moya's Senselessness, the first of his novels to be translated into English, and which a friend of hers recommended, several years ago, when she was deep in the throes of her own book. Both her own novel novel and Moya's deal with atrocities, and both in some darkly humorous ways. So we talk to her about what she learned from Moya, and how reading this book helped her get her own novel over the finish line.
You can learn more about Sugi, and her new book, here: https://vvganeshananthan.com/.
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by writer and editor Aaron Burch, whose novel Year of the Buffalo came out in November. Aaron is also a long-time literary editor, having founded Hobart in the early 2000s and, more recently, HAD, which has made "skull collecting" the newest badge of literary coolness. For our reading, Aaron chose Chris Bachelder's debut novel from 2001, Bear v. Shark, which he remembered loving and wanted to revisit. We talk about what makes a work of fiction feel dated--which may go against conventional wisdom--as well as risk-taking and having fun as a writer. Plus: humor writing of the early internet; what it means to be a literary-world outsider; and why the revision process can often feel neverending.
You can buy Aaron's new novel here: https://americanbuffalobooks.org/. Or visit his website here: https://www.aaronburch.net/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by several of the Barrelhouse editors for our annual holiday episode. This year we're reading the David Baldacci novel The Christmas Train, which follows a salty, Mark Twain-loving writer on a cross-country train trip filled with heartwarming hijinks. There's a boa constrictor. There's an Aretha Franklin stand-in. There's an old guy who loves to lecture people about the magic of train travel. And maybe ... love?
You can learn more about Barrelhouse here: https://www.barrelhousemag.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Siân Griffiths (author of Scrapple, and The Heart Keeps Faulty Time) to discuss a short story she regularly teaches and that her students often dislike, in large part because it involves killing cats. And it turns out Mike might be on Team Siân's Students, though for somewhat different reasons (not that he cares for cats being killed, either!). We talk about the pedagogical benefits of having your students read something they may not like, and debate where the line is between a good description and an overwrought, show-offy one. Plus: horse stuff!
You can read the story, "Breatharians," here, via The New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2012/10/22/breatharians
And learn more about our guest, and her work, here: http://www.sbgriffiths.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Shannon Wolf, a British writer and poet currently making her home in the U.S., who picked this episode's book after hearing us on a previous episode ask, hypothetically, whether there might be a novelization of the movie Legally Blonde. Shannon, a superfan of the film, knew it was actually based on a novel, though the story of that novel's publication is a bit of a twisty one. And while Amanda Brown's book lays out the basic plot and character arcs that we all know and love from the film, the tone of the novel is a lot less cheerful and winning.
You can learn more about this episode's guest, and her work, at her website: https://helloshanwolf.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Amy Butcher—author, most recently, of Mothertrucker—who tells us about the outsized influence Jo Ann Beard's work has had on her own writing, including her decision to write creative nonfiction in the first place. We also dig into some of the difficult genre questions posed by Beard's work. Is it fair to call a piece nonfiction when so much of it involves the invention of another person's interior life? What does the term "essay" really encompass? And do these genre distinctions really matter?
You can learn more about this episode's guest, and about her books, at her website: https://www.amyebutcher.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Jen A. Miller--freelance writer and reporter, and author of Running: A Love Story--to talk about why she loves regency romance novels, and in particular those that explore queer relationships. Jen's book pick for us was The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, the first book in a new series from Cat Sebastian. We talk about the "rules" of romance novels, why they often don't get the respect of other kinds of books, and how contemporary romance authors are challenging the heteronormative traditions of the genre in interesting ways. Plus: the return of Jen's book-a-week blog, and why she loves celebrity memoirs in audiobook form.
You can keep up with Jen's weekly reading here, at Book a Week With Jen: https://www.bookaweekwithjen.com/.
You can also learn more about her work, and subscribe to her free newsletter on freelancing, at her website: https://jenamiller.com/
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Stephanie Feldman--author, most recently, of the novel Saturnalia (The Unnammed Press, 2022)--who introduces us to a funny, and surprisingly moving short story about a fictional New Jersey cryptid, Walkdog. The story, by Sofia Samatar, takes the form of a student research paper, but as it progresses we realize it's less about the cryptid in question than about the paper writer's secret relationship with a boy everyone in school makes fun of for being a nerd.
You can learn more about Stephanie's novel here: https://www.stephaniefeldman.com/books/saturnalia/
And you can find more about Sofia Samatar, with links to her various books, here: https://www.sofiasamatar.com/
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Elizabeth McCracken (author, most recently, of the novel The Hero of This Book, out Oct. 4 from Harper Collins) to discuss Mary Gaitskill's 2005 novel Veronica, a book that until recently Elizabeth was scared to re-read. We talk carnality in fiction, and the sweatiness of early 80s New York City. Plus: we compare notes on our time at the Iowa Writers Workshop, discuss trigger warnings for undergrad classes, and Elizabeth explains why for years she quietly pretended to have read Dostoevsky.
You can order Elizabeth's newest book here: https://bookshop.org/books/the-hero-of-this-book/9780062971272
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Kevin Kearney (author of the forthcoming novel How to Keep Time, and a staff writer for PopMatters) to discuss John McPhee's 1968 book The Pine Barrens, which taught America about the relatively small pocket of New Jersey that seemed to exist outside of time. We also talk to Kevin about his own book, and the process of finding a publisher for it, which can sometimes feel overwhelming or intimidating, especially for books that might not be a fit for one of the big commercial publishing houses.
You can find out more about Kevin, and stay up to date on his work, at his website: https://www.kevinmkearney.com/. Also, you can preorder his book, which comes out on November 4: https://www.thirtywestph.com/shop/howtokeeptime
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Adalena Kavanagh (work in Electric Lit, The Believer, lots of other places) to discuss three stories from Best American Short Stories 1985, an anthology that for some reason was lying around her house when she was a kid, prompting her to read some Serious Literary Fiction at a young age. Adalena wanted to revisit the stories to see if they would hold up, or even conform to her memories of them.
You can find out more about Adalena, and follow her work, on Twitter: https://twitter.com/adalenakavanagh. Or on her website: https://adalenakavanagh.com/
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by poet Celeste Doaks, whose most recent book, American Herstory, focuses on the experience of former first lady Michelle Obama's years in the White House, including the art and decor choices she made while living there. So it's fitting that Celeste had us read an essay by art historian Richard Powell about the official Obama portraits, which in many ways broke with established tradition for presidential portraiture.
We talk about the relationship between writing and visual art, how to use art in a creative writing classroom, and the gender and racial politics of portraiture, among other subjects. Plus we close out the episode with Celeste reading a poem about lightning, so make sure you stay tuned for that!
You can find out more about Celeste--including how to get a hold of her books--at her website: https://doaksgirl.com/
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
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We're joined by Catherine Nichols, writer and host of the Lit Century podcast, to discuss Katie Kitamura's novel Intimacies, which Barack Obama loved and at least one of us kinda hated. Plus: what makes an ideal audiobook, why Shakespeare would be useful in a fight, and the subtle joys of a semicolon.
You can find Catherine on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/clnichols6. And check out the Lit Century podcast here: https://lithub.com/author/litcentury/
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by long-time book reviewer Michael Schaub (NPR, Kirkus, Bookslut, elsewhere) to discuss a book that changed the way he thought about books: Ander Monson's debut, Other Electricities. We talk about what separates experiments in form that feel organic to a story versus those that feel superfluous or inscrutable. Also: the ethics of book reviewing, horse ownership, and is everything actually bigger in Texas?
You can find Michael on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/michaelschaub. And see his reviews at NPR here: https://www.npr.org/people/151841337/michael-schaub
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Kristin Keane, author of An Encyclopedia of Bending Time, to discuss A Ghost in the Throat, a genre-crossing memoir by Irish writer Doireann NÃ GhrÃofa. We talk about strategies for incorporating research into creative nonfiction, what counts as "text" beyond traditional words on a page, and some of the challenges Kristin faced when she decided to structure her own memoir as an encyclopedia. Plus: Quantum Leap, foot massagers, and none of us understands what the metaverse is.
You can read an excerpt of Kristin's book here, via the Washington Post.
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
It's our 400th episode! Which, to be honest, we didn't realize when we were recording this, because we're bad at math. But that doesn't make it any less exciting! And we inadvertently planned a pretty special one to mark the milestone: we're joined by Becky Barnard and Dave Housley, Barrelhouse editors and authors of the new YA novel The Greys, to discuss one of the craziest movie novelizations of all time: E.T., The Extraterrestrial, by William Kotzwinkle. It's the adorable little alien character you know and love, except super horny?
If you like the show, and would like more of it in your life, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Two guests this week, as we're joined by the co-hosts of the literary nonfiction podcast I'll Find Myself When I'm Dead. Though Elena and Justin are also quite accomplished nonfiction authors in their own right. Justin St. Germain is the author of the memoir Son of a Gun, and more recently a book-length essay about Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Elena Passarello is the author of the essay collections Let Me Clear My Throat and Animals Strike Curious Poses.
The book they chose for us to read is a collection by Donald Hall, former U.S. poet laureate, called Essays After Eighty. We talk about the occasional essay as a form, what makes an essay an essay--as opposed to a random assortment of thoughts--and lots, lots more.
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it in your life, you can join our Patreon, where $5 gets you two bonus episodes each month, including our ongoing Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Michelle Hart, author of the novel We Do What We Do in the Dark and a former editor for Oprah Daily. For our reading this week, Michelle chose a short story by Leopoldine Core, "Hog for Sorrow," about a young sex worker with complicated feelings towards one of her clients and toward one of her coworkers.
Our guest this week is longtime Barrelhouse poetry editor Dan Brady, whose most recent book, Subtexts, uses some interesting constraints to create erasures and layerings of language. His pick for us was another book of poems created through an innovative process: White Bull, by Elizabeth Hughey. The poems in Hughey's book are all assembled from the words of Bull Connor, Birmingham, Alabama's famous segregationist public safety commissioner.
If you like the podcast, and would like more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon--$5 gets you access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, plus two new bonus episodes every month: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Our guest this week is Laura McGrath, an assistant professor of English at Temple University, where she teaches literary criticism and contemporary literature--including a class about best sellers. It's in that context that she chose our book, Valley of the Dolls, the 1966 camp classic by Jacqueline Susann. We talk about the book as both a novel and a cultural phenomenon, and what McGrath's students make of it all these years later.
If you like the show, and would like more of it in your life, for $5 a month you can get two monthly bonus episodes, including our ongoing Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Our guest this week is Inga Saffron, Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer. We talk about Jane Jacobs' groundbreaking work in urban studies, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and how it's weathered the test of time since its publication in the 1960s. We also talk about the past and future of journalism, Inga's work as a foreign correspondent in Russia, and lots of other stuff. You can find Inga's newest book here. And if you like the show, and want more of it in your life, you can get biweekly bonus episodes by joining our Patreon for just $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Our guest this week is Danielle Evans (The Office of Historical Corrections), who chose the 1929 Harlem Renaissance novel Plum Bun, in part because she's lately found herself interested in narratives about passing. We talk about how Jessie Redmon Fauset's novel compares to other passing novels, how Danielle's students respond to the book, and the complicated politics of writing about race and gender in the late '20s.
Our guest this week is Mike Meginnis (Drowning Practice, Fat Man and Little Boy). He joins us to discuss a playful genre-bending novel by Megan Milks, Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body. We also talk about Mike's relationship to genre, the similarities between genre and gender categories, and why he rarely cries.
You can find Milks' novel here: https://www.feministpress.org/books-a-m/margaret-and-the-mystery-of-the-missing-body
And find out more about Mike and his work here: https://www.mikemeginnis.com/
If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're joined by Dave Housley to talk office novels! Dave's most recent book, The Other Ones, is about an office that wins the lottery--or, more specifically, it's about the people in that office who chose not to play. We also discuss Christian Tebordo's most recent novel, The Apology, which is also set in an office and involves some Clorox-related warfare.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which has forced us to read books by Tucker Max, Danielle Steel, Sean Penn, and--most recently--a kid who claimed that he went to heaven.
This week we're joined by Isaac Butler (author, most recently, of The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act) to discuss a play by Annie Baker, The Aliens. Butler has worked as a theater director, as well as an author and podcaster and cultural critic, so we thought he'd be a perfect guest to help us wrap our heads around the world of contemporary theater. We talk about adapting plays for the screen, the Robert Altman version of Tony Kushner's Angels in America that almost existed, and how to figure out the right focus for a work of research-driven nonfiction like Butler's most recent book.
If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For just $5, you get two bonus episodes every month, including our ongoing Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're joined by returning guest Asali Solomon (author of The Days of Afrekete) to discuss Kiese Laymon's award-winning memoir, Heavy. We talk about what people expect from memoir, and why readers are sometimes put off by complicated stories without easy resolutions.
We welcome Tyrese Coleman (How to Sit) to discuss the 1999 Sister Souljah novel The Coldest Winter Ever. We talk about the genre of street lit, and why some Black authors celebrate it while others bristle at being included in it. We also revisit Percival Everett's satirical novel Erasure, and wonder whether this Sister Souljah book inspired it.Â
If you enjoy the show, and would like more Book Fight in your live, you can join our Patreon for only $5 a month. Join soon and you can catch our next installment in The Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: Heaven is for Real: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
If you're a regular listener to the podcast, you know that we like to bring you something a little special around the holidays. This year, our Christmas book is about a very horny vampire, and we're joined to discuss it with two superstar Barrelhouse editors: Becky Barnard and Erin Fitzgerald.
Happy holidays! This week, while we take our annual break, we've got a special bonus episode for you. We recorded this one last December for the Patreon, as part of our Hunt for the Worst Book of all Time. A novel based on a terrible song that was, for some reason, eventually turned into a straight-to-cable movie starring Rob Lowe. Enjoy!
If you enjoyed this episode, and would like to get more in our Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time series, you can subscribe to our Patreon, for just $5 a month, which also helps to support all the free content we produce: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks! And we'll be back next week with this year's holiday episode, featuring two special guests!
We're joined by Christian Tebordo, author of several books and director of the MFA program at Roosevelt University in Chicago. We talk about how current students respond to ambiguity in stories, how small presses have evolved over the last several years, and why The Apology might be the most earnest book Tebordo will ever write.
We're joined by Kory Stamper, professional lexicographer and author of the book Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries, who chose a modern retelling of Beowulf for us to read. We consider how the epic poem translates to the contemporary American suburbs, and also why Beowulf has been so enduring in the first place. We also talk to Kory about her former job at Merriam-Webster's dictionary, the politics of language, and why we're right to roll our eyes at people who correct our grammar.
You can learn more about Kory's book here: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/530504/word-by-word-by-kory-stamper/
You can find Kory on Twitter here: https://twitter.com/korystamper
If you like our podcast, and would like to get access to two bonus episodes a month--including our ongoing hunt for the worst book of all time--please consider joining our Patreon, for just $5/month: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Elisa Gabbert (The Unreality of Memory) to discuss Benjamin Labatut's When We Cease to Understand the World, a book that is mostly nonfiction--about scientists whose discoveries pushed them in the direction of madness--with some fictional flourishes. We talk about genre distinctions, reading works in translation, and why fall is the best season.
We also rope Elisa into helping us answer a couple questions from the NaNoWriMo forums about naming cars and what life is like under the sea.
You can find Elisa on Twitter @egabbert.
Or check out her website, which features links to her work: http://www.elisagabbert.com/
You can also read the poems she referenced in her answer to "what reading experience has mostly recently made you cry." The Mark Leidner poem is here: https://sixthfinch.com/leidner4.html. And the Ezra Pound poem is here: https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/47692/the-river-merchants-wife-a-letter-56d22853677f9.
Finally: if you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, where $5 a month gets you access to two monthly bonus episodes, plus our entire back catalog: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
It's been a minute since we had Katherine Hill on the show, but long-time listeners may remember her multiple past appearances, including one in which we discussed Judy Blume's Forever and another in which Mike failed to finish the very long book that Katherine picked. But now she's back, and we're delving into one of her recent favorites, The Copenhagen Trilogy by Tove Ditlevson, a three-part memoir that was recently released in a single hardback edition, to much buzz on the literary internet. We talk about the book's blunt, unsentimental style, and why critics are so keen on putting it into the category of "autofiction."
We also rope Katherine into taking a trip with us to the National Novel Writing Month forums, where we try to help writers with their world-building and character naming.
You can learn more about Katherine--and her books!--on her website, here: https://www.katherine-hill.com/
If you like the show, for just $5 you can get access to two bonus episodes a month, plus our entire archive: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
For more information about the upcoming one-day Barrelhouse conference (online!), or to register, check out https://www.writersconnectconference.com/
This week, we're joined by the writer Andrew Moxon (author of the novel The Revisionaries), who read Michael Ondaatje's In the Skin of a Lion as an undergrad and wanted to see if it would hold up some twenty years later. We talk about our respective relationships with historical fiction, as well as what it's like--for Andrew, at least--to gain more than 30,000 Twitter followers in a single day.
You can check out Moxon's book here: https://www.amazon.com/Revisionaries-Moxon/dp/1612197981
And if you like our podcast, and would like more of it in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5 a month you get two monthly bonus episodes, including our ongoing Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time. You can also sleep well at night knowing that you help support the regular episodes, which are free to listen to but definitely not free to produce: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening! And if you like the show, tell a friend!
This week, we're joined by Dan McQuade (Defector Media) to discuss humor columnist Dave Barry's debut novel, Big Trouble. Both Dan and Mike were big fans of Dave Barry's humor writing as teens, while Tom apparently skipped right over his newspaper column each week on his way to The Family Circus and Heathcliff. We talk about how difficult it can be to maintain a consistent tone in a "wacky" novel, as well as the ill-fated movie version of the book, which had the bad fortune of having a September 2001 release date as well as a climactic scene featuring a bomb on a plane. We also talk to Dan about Defector Media, the worker-owned company he's been writing for since the collapse, via venture capital shitheads, of Deadspin.
Check out Defector Media here, and subscribe to support independent journalism: https://defector.com/
And if you like our show, consider subscribing to our Patreon, which gets you two bonus episodes each month for a mere $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week, we're joined by Ben Winters (Golden State, The Quiet Boy) to discuss a Stanley Fish book about how to write great sentences. We talk about our love-hate relationships with craft books, why our first drafts are such a mess, and the false dichotomy of "language" vs "plot" when attempting to categorize writers. We also chat with Ben about his unusual writing career, which began with being hired to write the novel Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters for Quirk Books.
You can find out more about Ben on his website: https://benhwinters.com/
If you like our podcast, and would like to get more of it, check out our Patreon, where $5 gets you two bonus episodes a month: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week, Lilly Dancyger (Negative Space) joins us to discuss an essay about creepy men and harassment by Melissa Febos, "Intrusions." We talk about what makes this essay stand out in a crowded field of personal essays, and what writers of creative nonfiction can learn from it, particularly the way it operates in multiple modes that allows the author to approach her subject from a variety of angles. We also talk to Lilly about teaching creative nonfiction, why editing personal essays started to give her "trauma fatigue," and how to balance your desire for "exposure" with your desire for being able to pay your rent.
If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon--for $5 a month, you'll get access to two monthly bonus episodes, plus our entire back catalog of bonus material: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week, novelist Adam O'Fallon Price (The Hotel Neversink) joins us to discuss a strange, short novel by Muriel Spark called The Driver's Seat, in which a woman travels to the south of Italy to find someone who will murder her. We talk about the book's detached, somewhat cold point of view, its narrative leaps into the future tense, and just what to make of its odd cast of characters. We also talk to Adam about his relationship to the mystery genre, how his agent talked him out of writing a linked story collection, and why he left his music career to make a life as a writer instead.
If you like the show, check out our Patreon, where a measly $5 gets you access to two monthly bonus episodes and archived content: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week, Emily Adrian (The Second Season) joins us to discuss a book she'd never read, Frederick Exley's 1968 "fictional memoir" A Fan's Notes. The book mirrors Exley's own experiences with mental health facilities, as well as his lifelong obsession with the New York Giants' star Frank Gifford. We consider how the book has held up over time, and whether we can--or should--get past its pretty rampant misogyny.
We also talk about Emily's new novel, about a trailblazing female sportscaster, and why certain men can't seem to believe she understands basketball. Plus: how to write well about sports, and the important differences between a lectern and a podium.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which has forced us to read books by Tucker Max, Danielle Steel, Sean Penn, and--most recently--Morrissey.
This week, J. Robert Lennon (Subdivision, Pieces for the Left Hand) joins us to discuss a story he loves to teach: Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God." We talk about what he hopes his students take from that piece, and why there are so few omniscient narrators in contemporary literary fiction. Plus: Christian summer camps, why you should never read your Goodreads reviews, and why John doesn't want to fight anyone.
When this week's guest, Lynn Coady, won Canada's prestigious Giller Prize for her book of short stories, Hellgoing, the comparisons to Alice Munro were probably inevitable. So it's fitting that the story Coady chose for this episode of the podcast is by Munro, and is one Coady says she's returned to again and again. "Save the Reaper," from The Love of a Good Woman, is a bit more menacing than the typical Munro story, though it makes us wonder if the menace is there in other Munro stories, too, just less obviously on the surface.
We also talk to Coady about her own work, including her most recent novel, Watching You Without Me, and why she decided she wanted to write a book about--and for--middle-aged women.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which has forced us to read books by Tucker Max, Danielle Steel, and Sean Penn.
We're joined by David Roth (writer and co-owner, Defector Media) to discuss the debut novel by Pete Beatty, which spins a tall tale of a mythological character, Big Son, and his various feats in 1830s Ohio. We talk about how the novel complicates and subverts stories of American myth, and just how much fun it is to read. We also chat with David about his own work, including blending sports and politics at Deadspin (R.I.P.), and how reading Kurt Vonnegut prepared him for writing about Donald Trump.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which most recently forced us to read actor Sean Penn's "novel," Bob Honey Who Just Do Stuff.
We're joined by Lauren Grodstein, author of several novels, including the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family, to discuss Philip Roth's Everyman. As a Jewish author from New Jersey, Grodstein says Roth has loomed large throughout her life, and she's wrestled with how to think about his legacy, particularly in light of the recent scandal involving his biographer, Blake Bailey. But even more broadly, how are we meant to reckon with an author who is wise in so many ways, but also clearly limited in others?
If you like the show, and would like more of it in your life (in the form of two monthly bonus episodes) you can join our Patreon for just five bucks: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by Jeff Chon, author of the new novel Hashtag Good Guy With a Gun, to talk about political fiction, conspiracy theories, and why some editors are cowards. We also talk about the South Korean novel The Disaster Tourist, by Yun Ko-Eun (translated by Lizzie Buehler), which Jeff says he picked up as part of his ongoing project to "be a better Korean," but then fell in love with because of its lively voice and dark humor.
Thanks for listening! If you like the podcast, and would like more of it (in the form of regular bonus episodes) you can subscribe to our Patreon here, for just five bucks: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We're joined by John Kell (freelance journalist, PR rep for Chobani) to talk about why the pandemic inspired him to read more books featuring gay male characters, which he recently wrote about in a piece for Fortune. We discuss one of those books, Edmund White's Our Young Man, and why John felt somewhat ambivalent about its main character, a gorgeous male model who is trying not to age out of the industry. We also talk about what kinds of gay lives get represented in fiction, which fictional universes we'd like to see get COVID updates, and what it's like to make the move from journalism to public relations.
If you like the show, and would like access to two bonus episodes each month--plus our entire backlog of bonus material--you can subscribe to our Patreon for just $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
We welcome special guest Christopher Gonzalez (I'm Not Hungry But I Could Eat) to discuss a novel that taught him a lot about flash fiction. Also discussed: the Netflix show Marriage or Mortgage, why flash fiction isn't just about word count, and how to title your novel to give critics an easy talking point.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, you can join our Patreon and get regular bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
In celebration of the nine-year anniversary of our podcast, we're bringing back some of our favorite segments from the show's history! We also discuss some exciting changes coming down the pike.
If you like the show, and would like more of it in your life, check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're wrapping up our Winter of Wayback season by reviewing what we've learned. Which stories and essays did we love? Which pieces did we hate? What did we learn about 1968, and how did it compare to our previous presuppositions? Also, as a special bonus, Tom reviews a famous 1968 movie he'd never seen before, and Mike eats a Big Mac.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we continue our exploration of 1968 by checking out a Bernard Malamud story, "Man in the Drawer," which won the O'Henry prize that year. Also: what were hippies up to in 1968? We take a deep dive into newspaper archives to learn how that term was being used, and what it could tell us about the state of the counterculture (and the attitudes of squares).
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, for $5/month you can subscribe to our Patreon and get bonus episodes (plus support the work we do): https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we continue our Winter of Wayback season by checking out a couple stories from the 1969 Best American Short Stories anthology (featuring stories published in 1968). We intentionally chose authors we didn't know anything about, though it turns out both writers went on to fairly celebrated careers, albeit in different genres. Norma Klein became a beloved YA author, often compared to Judy Blume, though she died at the tragically young age of 50. Jack Cady, meanwhile, won numerous awards for his horror and sci fi novels and spent a couple decades teaching in the Pacific Northwest.
Also this week: Poetry gets political in the late 60s, in a way that feels very similar to today.
If you like our podcast, and would like access to our regular bonus episodes, subscribe to our Patreon for $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we continue our Winter of Wayback season by reading a dispatch about the 1968 Democratic National Convention written for Esquire by William S. Burroughs. The convention itself was famously contentious, and Chicago Mayor Richard Daley was criticized for allegedly allowing the cops to run roughshod over protesters outside the convention hall. Burroughs, meanwhile, brings to the party a politics we'd describe as "confusing."
Also this week: The poetry of 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy. And the return of Raccoon News!
If you like our show, and would like more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 and get access to a whole wealth of bonus episodes, including our latest series, The Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week, we're continuing our Winter of Wayback trip to 1968 by reading a story, "Boys and Girls," from Alice Munro's first story collection. We revisit arguments about Munro's stories from our grad school years, and consider the unique structure of her stories, which often rely less on plot trajectory than on a kind of synthesis, looking at a character's life from a variety of angles. Plus: a new game, Munro or No!
You can read the story here: http://www.giuliotortello.it/shortstories/boys_and_girls.pdf
If you like the show, you can subscribe to our Patreon for just $5 and get access to our entire vault of bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're continuing our Winter of Wayback season, in which we've been reading books, stories and essays from 1968, a year that parallels our current moment in a number of ways. Writer Lyz Lenz (God Land, Belabored) joins us to discuss a writer she admires from that era: Ellen Willis, who began her career as a music journalist but did some of her most important work on misogyny within the progressive movement.
Also discussed: internet hate, why men love The Maltese Falcon, and the harassment Lyz has gotten in the wake of her recent profile of famous tweet thread guy Seth Abramson.
You can read Lyz's profile of Abramson here: https://www.cjr.org/special_report/seth-abramson-twitter.php
You can learn more about Lyz, read more of her writing, and subscribe to her Substack here: https://lyzlenz.com/
If you like our podcast, and would like more of it in your life, subscribe to our Patreon for regular bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're continuing our trip through 1968 by checking out the very first issue of a literary journal that still exists, and has published lots of famous writers: The South Carolina Review. The debut issue includes an essay on race relations in South Carolina, by an esteemed journalist, as well as a short story by Max Steele, who had one of the best names in the literary game.
Also this week: 1968 was a big year for children's lit and YA. The National Book Awards started a category for children's lit, and publishers began to invest in books that offered more realistic portraits of teen life.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which so far has included Ethan Frome, The Christmas Shoes, and Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.
This week we're discussing the debut novel by N. Scott Momaday, House Made of Dawn, which won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1968. The book had an interesting road to publication, and the prize seemed to take both the author and his publishing house by surprise. We look at how people were writing about the novel in 1968, and discover that--surprise, surprise--white people were kinda racist about Native American culture! Even in praising Momaday's book, they couldn't help but drag out lots of stereotypical tropes about American Indians.
Also this week: critics worry (in 1968) that the memoir will kill the novel.
If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which will net you regular bonus episodes, including our ongoing Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're discussing a famous Pauline Kael essay about the movie "Bonnie and Clyde," which The New Republic refused to run, and which then accidentally launched her long, storied career at The New Yorker. Kael argued that the movie, which had been panned by many critics, was more interesting than people were giving it credit for, and that the negative reviews actually said something about the current cultural moment.
We also discuss the recent Harper's special section on "life after Trump," and what "the Trump novel" might look like.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which so far has included Ethan Frome, The Christmas Shoes, and Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.
This week we're discussing a 1968 Elizabeth Hardwick essay about the Memphis funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. The piece attempts to take the measure of both black and white Memphis after MLK's assassination, and notes tensions within the Civil Rights movement that in certain ways echo arguments within progressive movements today. We also dive into some 1968 debates about whether fiction was up to the task of representing an increasingly fractured, absurdist reality. Plus: women's magazines pull back on publishing short stories, drying up an important market for writers.
If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which so far has included Ethan Frome, The Christmas Shoes, and Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.
Elizabeth Hardwick on MLK: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/the-apotheosis-of-martin-luther-king/
Tobi Haslett (in Harper's) on Elizabeth Hardwick: https://harpers.org/archive/2017/12/the-cost-of-living/3/
Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
When Playboy Magazine accepted an Ursula LeGuin story in 1968, the editors had only one request for the young author: could they use the byline U.K. LeGuin, so Playboy's readers didn't know the story was written by a woman? This week we discuss the story, and the circumstances of its publication. Plus: what were creative writing grad programs like in 1968? We take a peek at the Iowa Writers Workshop, thanks to a lengthy feature story from The Chicago Tribune, which features beer bars, Kurt Vonnegut, and a woman who the author of the piece chooses to describe, unfortunately, as "stacked."
If you like the show, check us out on Patreon, where $5 gets you lots of bonus content, including our ongoing Hunt for the Worst Book in the World: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Welcome to our Winter of Wayback season! This year we're diving into 1968, a year that, like our current moment, has often been described as an inflection point in American politics. What we'd like to know: What was the world of literature like that year? Please join us, over the next several weeks, as we try to find out. This week: Tom Wolfe on surfers, slackers, and the culture of parentally-funded hippies.
Happy New Year, book friends! We're giving you access to this bonus episode from November, which kicked off our new series: The Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time. For the first edition we re-read Ethan Frome, a novel that is still being foisted upon America's high school students, for some reason.
If you like this episode, and would like to hear future editions of The Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, you can subscribe to our Patreon for just $5 a month. That also helps to support the show more generally, as we continue to bring you free weekly episodes.
Subscribe here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening! And we hope 2021 has been good to you so far.
It's the most wonderful time of the year: when we break out the eggnog and suffer through a terrible Christmas-themed book so we can goof on it. This year's selection is Swamp Santa, book 16 in Jana DeLeon's Miss Fortune mystery series. We try to make sense of a rather convoluted plot, debate the relative merits of wacky parrots, and get lost in explanatory dialogue.
Check out the website for the town of Sinful, Louisiana, which can fill in some backstory on this week's book: http://sinfullouisiana.com/
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This week we welcome two special guests--Amanda Meadows and Geoffrey Golden of the Dirt Cheap podcast--to discuss one of their favorite recent graphic novels: BTTM FDRS, by Ezra Clayton Daniels and Ben Passmore. The book has been compared to Jordan Peele's film Get Out, and features a many-tentacled monster that inhabits an apartment building in a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood.
Our guests help us do some panel analysis of the book, and we talk about the horror genre, and dividing line between effective allegory and allegories that feel heavy-handed. We also talk about their podcast, in which they are reading a very bizarre-sounding pulp novel called Murder in the Glass Room, about an L.A. private investigator who is very obsessed with furniture and elevators.
You can check out their podcast, Dirt Cheap, here: https://www.neonhum.com/show-pages/dirt-cheap.html
You can learn more about the book, BTTM FDRS, at the Fantagraphics site: https://www.fantagraphics.com/products/bttm-fdrs
And if you like our podcast, and want more of it in your life, subscribe to our Patreon. $5 a month gets you access to all our bonus episodes, including our newly launched Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
David Foster Wallace famously considered the lobster. This week, we consider him! How has his writing--and his legacy--aged in the nearly twenty years since his most well-known essays were published? Also: how mean should creative writing teachers be about lousy (or lazy) student work?
You can read Wallace's essay "Consider the Lobster" here: http://www.columbia.edu/~col8/lobsterarticle.pdf
You can also join our Patreon--$5/month helps support the podcast and also gets you access to all our bonus episodes, including our recent investigation into whether Ethan Frome is a terrible novel that no one should ever have to read: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week, Mike picks an essay that exemplifies some of what he doesn't love in contemporary writing about mental health. Too often, there's a tendency to fall back on abstractions, cliches, and platitudes, rather than to do the (admittedly tough!) work of putting the reader inside the writer's actual, lived experience.
In the second half of the show, we take one last dive into the NaNoWriMo forums to give our (semi-solicited?) advice to this year's crop of would-be novelists.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon! For $5/month, you'll get access to all our bonus episodes, past and future. Check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're talking Wikipedia vandalism, essays that show their editing work, and creative nonfiction that borrows moves from academic writing. Plus, another deep dive into the NaNoWriMo forums to help out this year's crop of aspiring novelists.
This week's reading is a David LeGault essay, "Revision and Collapse," which was first published in Fourth Genre. Though as always, you don't have to do the reading prior to listening to the episode.
If you like the show, and would enjoy having a little more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, where $5/month gets you access to all our bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week's episode asks the question: Why aren't conservatives funny? Or, put another way: Didn't conservatives used to be funny? At least some of them? And could they ever be funny again?
More specifically, we revisit a P.J. O'Rourke essay from 1982, in which the author takes a cruise to the Soviet Union sponsored by the magazine The Nation, and spends most of his time drinking vodka with the Russians on-board while making fun of the insufferable American passengers, who are sort of like the parents from Family Ties except with even less self-awareness. Shooting fish in a barrel, maybe, but also: what annoying fish!
If you like the show, and would enjoy having more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon, where you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're talking about professional wrestling, essays with unusual structures, troubled father-son relationships, and what it's like to be one of the only non-white kids at your school. Plus: it's still November, which means we're digging into the NaNoWriMo forums to answer some of the internet's weirdest questions about writing a novel.
This week: writing about money and social class; righteous anger; and essays that spark actual class debate. Plus we begin out month-long dive into the National Novel Writing Month forums, to offer our (semi-solicited?) advice to this year's crop of prospective authors.
Our reading this week was "The Gifted Classes," an essay by Frances Lefkowitz. You can read it via The Sun: https://www.thesunmagazine.org/issues/325/the-gifted-classes
If you like our show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon, which gets you access to all our bonus episodes and also helps support the making of the podcast: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're talking about research-driven memoir writing, books that are difficult to pin down, and what it means to say that writing feels "poetic."
Our reading was The Grave on the Wall, the prize-winning memoir by poet Brandon Shimoda, which begins with the author on a search to understand his grandfather's life.
In the second half of the show, we talk about strategies for talking about student work that might be offensive or otherwise problematic.
You can buy The Grave on the Wall here: https://bookshop.org/books/the-grave-on-the-wall/9780872867901
And if you like our podcast, and would like more of it in your life, you can join our Patreon and get regular bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week's reading is an essay by Elena Passarello about birdsong. But it's also other stuff! We talk about writing that make you look at the world a bit differently, and writers who can make you care about things you never thought you cared about. In the second half of the show, we discuss a recent Twitter kerfuffle over writing and money and whether publishing a book can (or should) change your life.
The essay we discussed, "Of Singing," was published in The Iowa Review, but is also available in Passerello's 2012 collection, Let Me Clear My Throat, from Sarabande Books.
If you like the podcast, and would like some more of it in your life, please consider joining our Patreon, which gets you monthly bonus episodes and also helps support the making of the show: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're discussing a piece of creative nonfiction that really pushes the bounds of the genre, imagining the effects of a California earthquake on animal and plant life, as well as several invented human characters. Daniel Orozco's "Shakers" appeared in an edition of Best American Essays edited by David Foster Wallace, but is it really an "essay"?Â
In the second half of the show, we talk about strategies for running creative writing workshops. When we started teaching, we both adhered to the kinda "free-for-all" model favored in our own grad program, but over the years we've begun to experiment with more structured approaches, including tasking small groups with digging into various elements of a story or essay.
If you like the show, and would like some bonus Book Fight episodes in your life, consider joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're continuing our discussion of creative nonfiction by revisiting a classic in the genre: Joan Didion's essay "The White Album," which explores the author's experiences of anxiety and paranoia at "the end of the 60s." We talk about things we can learn from a master, and how to write essays that will age well. Plus: a Miss Manners column about famous authors snubbing an academic.
If you like the show, and you'd like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes: Book Fight After Dark, where we explore various genres of romance novel, and Reading the Room, where we give writers (and readers) advice on how to live their lives.
This week we're discussing a series of very short essays by J. Robert Lennon, and talking about how we teach students to write very short pieces that aren't simply tossed-off and incomplete. Plus: Tom gets angry about a rich book influencer who thinks her pandemic problems are unique and interesting. And Mike runs into his first anti-masker in the wild.
You can read J. Robert Lennon's essay here: https://www.theliteraryreview.org/essay/ten-short-essays/
If you like the podcast, and would like more Book Fight in your life, for $5/month you can get three bonus episodes per month: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're continuing our ongoing discussion of creative nonfiction by diving into an essay by Hanif Abdurraqib about attending a Bruce Springsteen concert in Jersey and thinking about who gets to romanticize "hard work" in America. Plus: Tom has opinions about Susan Orlean rebranding herself as a fun drunk, and Mike brings you another installment of "The Worst Person in This Month's Architectural Digest."
You can buy Hanif's book here: https://twodollarradio.com/products/they-cant-kill-us
If you like our podcast, and would like to get all our bonus episodes, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5/month: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're talking about a second-person essay by Jennifer Murvin that was first published in The Cincinnati Review. We also talk about grading in creative writing classes, and how to arrive at standards that are fair without being either too mean or a pushover. Plus at least one tantalizing blind item!
Links:
You can learn more about Jennifer Murvin and her writing here: https://www.jennifermurvin.com/
Check out the bookstore she owns (and order books online) here: https://paginationbookshop.com/
And if you like our Podcast, and would enjoy getting bonus episodes of it each month, you can join our Patreon here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're discussing an Alice Bolin essay from The Toast, "A Meditation on Britney's 'Baby One More Time,'" which uses the pop star's music as a jumping-off point for an exploration of loneliness, isolation, and the ways in which we hold ourselves apart from others. We talk about ways that writers can use their pop culture obsessions to get into some pretty interesting personal territory, and how we can get students, in particular, to wade out into those deeper waters, rather than simply writing essays about music they like.
Also: Tom is mad about a writing conference that emailed him, and Mike hate-reads Architectural Digest.
You can read the Alice Bolin essay here: https://the-toast.net/2014/06/17/meditation-britneys-baby-one-time/
And if you like the show, and would like more of it in your life, you can join our Patreon, for just $5/month, and get all our bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
Welcome to our new fall season! Yes, we know that technically it's not fall, but school's back in session, and there are some brown leaves on the tree in front of one of our houses (it's possible the tree is dead). For the next several weeks, we're going to be delving into the world of creative nonfiction, with a particular eye towards teaching that genre in a classroom. We're both college professors who have taught both undergrad and grad classes, and this semester we both have occasion to teach some creative essays in our classes.
We're also interested in exploring the genre lines. What makes something "creative" nonfiction? What all fits under that broad umbrella? And where does creative nonfiction bump up against (and borrow from) other genres?
For this first week, we're discussing an essay by Joshua Wheeler, "Parachutes," Gulf Coast. The essay would later appear in his collection, Acid West.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes each month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we explore the many, many sub-genres of romance novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
You can check out all our Patreon content here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
This week we're discussing a Deb Olin Unferth story about an adjunct professor who knows when people will die, "Wait Till You See Me Dance," which prompts a discussion of our own brief tenure as adjuncts, and our current tenure as (non-tenure-track) professors, and how we're feeling about the upcoming semester. Also: dark humor, reading for surprise, and falling down wells.
Unferth's story first appeared in Harper's, in 2009, and was the title story of her 2017 story collection.
You can read the story here, via Electric Lit: https://electricliterature.com/a-story-of-a-murderous-adjunct-professor-by-deb-olin-unferth/
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, you can join our Patreon and get bonus episodes every month. For $5, you'll get access to our regular series Book Fight After Dark, where we read steamy (and sometimes very weird!) romance novels. We're also putting out other bonus content, including Reading the Room, where we give writers advice on navigating their lives. The $5/month also helps us keep making the show, which we enjoy doing but also don't get paid for.
Join up here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
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This week we're talking about an essay by Britni de la Cretaz about her complicated relationship with both the Miami Marlins and her hometown. That leads to a discussion of what makes sports-related writing interesting to non-sports fans, and how to unlearn some of the writing lessons taught to you in school. We also take another dive into #bookstagram, to try to figure out whether book influencers have actually read any books. Plus: Tom waits for a team of men to deliver his fancy new desk.
Here's a link to the essay in Catapult: https://catapult.co/stories/miami-marlins-florida-baseball-coming-home-britni-de-la-cretaz
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes each month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're reading a short story from Nick White's debut collection that was recommended by author Alissa Nutting. White's story prompts a discussion of the book business, specifically the rarity of short story collections published by big presses and how both the hype machine for young authors and the pushback against the hype machine for young authors can grow quickly tiresome.
Also this week: We begin what will surely be a multi-week exploration of book influencers (book-fluencers?) on Instagram.
Here's a link to the story, and Alissa Nutting's recommendation of it, via Electric Lit: https://electricliterature.com/alissa-nutting-recommends-a-story-about-the-aftermath-of-abuse-nick-white/
If you'd like to join our Patreon, to support the show and also get bonus episodes each month, you can do that here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight
Thanks for listening!
We ran into some technical difficulties with the book-based episode scheduled to release this week, so instead we're bringing you this free bonus episode, which was slated to be behind the Patreon paywall. We hope you enjoy it! We talk about what writers owe--and do not owe--to readers who reach out to them with questions, comments, or a desire to continue the conversation started by their work. How can you be kind and generous to your readers, but also set boundaries so that you don't wind up giving away too much of your time and labor?
This episode was inspired in part by responses Mike's been getting to an essay he wrote about reckoning with his racist fraternity. Lots of people have reached out with kind comments, and interesting questions, but he's also gotten requests that feel like a bridge too far.
Thanks for listening, and we hope you enjoy the bonus episode! We do a couple of these a month for our Patreon subscribers, along with a bonus book episode, usually about a goofy romance novel or something else outside our usual reading patterns. If you want more of that content, you can subscribe for just $5 a month. And we'll be back next week with another regular episode.
This week's story is by South Korean writer and filmmaker Lee Chang-Dong, and it's called "On Destiny." It basically traces the entire life of its main character, from his youth in an orphanage, separated during the war from his parents, and through stints of poverty, jail time, and then a possible payday. We talk about what makes certain stories feel fable-like, and the surprising little details that crop up when reading fiction in translation, like unexpected metaphors and unfamiliar aphorisms.
Also this week: another installment of Celebrities Recommend, including book picks from a star tennis player and a Food Network star.
Read the short story here: https://www.asymptotejournal.com/special-feature/lee-chang-dong-on-destiny/
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--romance novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're discussing a story by a celebrated Iranian author, Goli Taraghi, as well as a piece from the Los Angeles Review of Books that attempts to put her work into a cultural context. Are there things we don't get, as Western readers? Will certain elements of fiction always be culturally dependent, and thus slightly out of reach for readers outside that culture? Or is the story just too long and kind of meandering?
Also this week: Dave Eggers gets roasted.
Here's a link to the story: "The Pomegranate Lady and Her Sons"
The piece from the LARB: "The Forgotten Charm of Iranian Storytelling"
Dave Eggers in The New York Times: "Testing, Testing"
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we discuss a 2018 John Edgar Wideman story from The New Yorker, about a writing teacher trying to decide how to talk to a white student about a well-meaning story she's writing about the travails of a person of color. You can read that story here. Then we learn what books Val Kilmer thinks we should be reading this summer.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
We're in the midst of a global pandemic and a long-overdue upswell of support for defunding our ridiculously over-militarized police, all of which made Tom want to read a story about his dear old Ireland: Edward J. Delaney's "The Drowning." Actually the story is fine--good, even!--but it leads to a discussion of when we want fiction that helps us to think about the current moment and when we want fiction that takes us out of the current moment. Also: we follow up on last week's discussion of what personal essays are for.
This week we're discussing an essay by Mary Heather Noble called "Plume: An Investigation," which was originally published by True Story. The essay weaves together a few narrative strands, including the author trying to understand her young daughter's sometimes perplexing behavior, which leads her, unexpectedly, to a better understanding of her difficult father. The essay's a good one, and it prompts a discussion of what makes certain personal essays stand out in what is an increasingly crowded genre.
Also: can anti-racism reading lists help white people grow? Finally, we talk a little about how we pick things to read while we're in the midst of our own writing projects.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're discussing Taffy Brodesser-Akner's Fleishman Is In Trouble, a book that's been described as the novel Phillip Roth would have written if Phillip Roth understood women. Which is a pretty good Phillip Roth zing, but also maybe true? We talk about the book's depiction of internet dating, whether its view of marriage is cynical or pragmatic, and why at least one of us felt the need to reconsider some of his own behavior after reading the novel's closing chapters. Plus: we offer some advice for writers who are trying to promote their work online without stepping on the important work being done--on Twitter and elsewhere--by Black Lives Matter and anti-police activists. Is is possible to talk about your own stuff without getting in the way of an important political and cultural moment? Should you just shut up for a while?
This week we're discussing Elle Nash's 2018 novel Animals Eat Each Other, in which a nameless narrator enters into a rather fraught three-way relationship with a tattoo artist/Satanist and his girlfriend. We talk about what makes for good/interesting writing about sex, and how a book like this might hit differently at different ages. Plus: another installment of Judge A Book By Its Cover!
You can see the books we're judging on our website, or on Twitter.Â
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're reading one of Donald Barthelme's first published stories, "A Shower of Gold" which prompts a discussion of the relationship between postmodern absurdity and contemporary politics. Also: we check out recommended reading lists from Hallmark movie actor and producer Candace Cameron Bure and Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea. You might be surprised by what at least one of them is reading!
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're discussing a short story by Kelly Ramsey, "First Citizen of Mars," in which the narrator is the first person flown to Mars by Elon Musk. Actually the story is about all sorts of things, and the Elon Musk bit is really just a jumping-off point. We talk about how fiction can use real people--or well-known fictional characters--in interesting ways. We also take a visit to Yahoo Answers to help a few people out with their writing and publishing-related questions, and Tom takes a deep dive into that "what if the Beatles never existed" movie that probably none of us will ever see.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're reading a story by A.S. Byatt about a couple of upper-class twits who get their comeuppance. You love to see it! Also, in light of the recent dustup over Curtis Sittenfeld's Rodhman, we talk about alternate-universe novels we'd like to see in the world. Plus a new segment: Dante's Inferno!
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
For this week's episode we read John Jeremiah Sullivan's 2004 essay about attending one of the biggest Christian rock festivals in the world--Creation Fest, which is held annually in rural Pennsylvania and attracts upwards of 50,000 people each year. We talk about what separates great participatory journalism from frustrating participatory journalism, and our own brushes with youth-group Christianity. Then, for no good reason at all, we do a deep internet dive into erotic Elon Musk fanfic.
This week's short story traces the entire history of the planet in just about 2,000 words. Rachel B. Glaser's "Pee On Water" was first published in New York Tyrant and was the title story of her debut collection. We talk about the story's experiment in narrative time, and the accumulative quality of its short sentences. Also: Mike breaks down and buys a fancy office chair, we commiserate about repetitive stress pains, and we do another round of Judge a Book By Its Cover.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're discussing a Zadie Smith essay, "Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction," originally published in the New York Review of Books in 2019. The piece wrestles with how novelists can practice their craft--particularly when it comes to writing characters unlike themselves in some fundamental way--in an age when attempts at writing across racial, ethnic, gender, or other lines are often seen as problematic, or at least ill-advised.
Later in the podcast, we try out a new segment in which Tom explores his old CD collection and rates his former self.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we talk about one of Stephen King's early stories (first published in 1970, the same year he graduated college) and the recent rash of pandemic-themed personal essays. Are there ways to write about your quarantine experience while acknowledging that you're not the center of everyone else's universe?
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're discussing a story from Jamel Brinkley's award-winning debut collection, A Lucky Man. Plus, we answer more ridiculous NaNoWriMo questions, and we check out Amazon's Kindle store to see how many coronavirus-themed books have popped up already (short answer: so many!).
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we have a spoiler-free discussion of Teddy Wayne's new novel, Apartment, which is about a couple writers in Columbia's MFA program, circa 1996. We also take another dive into the re-opened NaNoWriMo forums, and play a round of Judge A Book By Its Cover, which unexpectedly turns up a teen romance novel with a cover featuring a young, pre-Friends Courtney Cox.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're discussing a book of "micro-memoirs" by the poet and essayist Beth Ann Fennelly. Plus another dive into the NaNoWriMo forums, and we resurrect a segment from the early days of the show: Judge a Book By Its Cover.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're discussing a short story recommended to us on Twitter as "feel-good literary fiction," though we're not sure that label is totally apt. "The Era," by Nana Kwame Adjei--Brenya, was first published in Guernica in April 2018. It's funny, and and strange, but "feel-good"? The jury's still out.
Also this week: NaNoWriMo has fired up its engines in response to the current pandemic, aiming to get people writing while they're stuck at home. Which means it's time for us to take another visit to the NaNoWriMo forums, to answer some pressing questions about vampires who eat regular food, what to name an Irish factory owner, and lots of other stuff. AND, as if that wasn't enough for one episode, we've also got some Tony the Tiger fan fiction. Who knew Tony was so sexy? (the whole internet, apparently).
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we're discussing a story about a murderous tiger by Rajesh Parameswaran, which was first published in Granta and then appeared in his 2013 book I Am An Executioner. The story raises a number of questions, like: Do tigers have the mental ability to make choices? And: Do we want to follow an animal around for 21 pages? Answers, it turns out, are mixed.
Also this week, the triumphant return of Fan Fiction Corner! Featuring some very sexy Mr. Clean fanfic (or very weird, depending on your personal proclivities). And Tom's got some raccoon news. All the old favorites!
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.
This week we check out the online literary magazine Taco Bell Quarterly, which recently put out its second issue. The journal began on something of a whim, according to its founding editor, and now publishes fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction inspired or related to Taco Bell in one way or another. We were curious: Would the pieces feel gimmicky? Or could Taco Bell be a weird but useful portal into great contemporary literature?
We also provide a recap of AWP 2020--the conference nearly derailed by the coronavirus--and try go figure out why we're sometimes annoyed by the relentlessly positive tweets of writers like Maggie Smith and Chuck Wendig (maybe because we're bad people?)
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions!
It's the final episode of our Winter of Wayback season, and we couldn't leave the twenties behind without talking about Dorothy Parker. Like a lot of people these days, both of us knew Parker only from her many famous quips, so we wanted to see what her actual writing was like. The story we read is one of her most popular--it won an O'Henry award, and is still regularly anthologized--but it wasn't what either of us expected.
Also this week: a bit of 1929 flash fiction that still holds up, plus monkey news!
We continue our journey through the 1920s by reading one of the decade's best-selling writers, and arguably its most famous adventurer. While still a student at Princeton, Richard Halliburton decided he wanted to spend his life traveling the globe, and writing about his adventures. At the height of his fame, he was publishing a new book every year and a half. Some doubted the veracity of his stories, including F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said his books were entertaining but probably dreamed up from behind a desk in Brooklyn.
This week we're continuing our trip through the 1920s by reading a couple New Yorker pieces from "reporter at large" Morris Markey. The New Yorker was founded by Harold Ross in 1925, and Markey was an early hire. He'd worked as a reporter for a handful of publications, but Ross basically gave him carte blanche to write about whatever he wanted. His work has been largely lost to history, but some have argued that Markey deserves more credit in discussions of New Journalism.
We checked out a couple of Markey's columns--about organized crime and Prohibition--to see if they stand the test of time. Plus, a story about a monkey who had diners at a fancy Parisian restaurant dropping their monocles into their wine.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to three monthly bonus episodes, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week we're continuing our trip through the 1920s by reading a couple stories from the short-lived literary magazine Fire!!, founded in 1926 by a group of black writers and artists that included Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Zora Neale Hurston. The stories we discuss include one by Zora Neale Hurston that is very dialect-heavy, and one by Gwendolyn Bennett about a former boxer living in France who (justifiably) hates American white people.
Also this week: we discuss the recent controversy surrounding Jeannine Cummins' book American Dirt, and learn more than we ever wanted to know about "book influencer" and very rich person Zibby Owens, host of the podcast Mom's Don't Have Time to Read and ardent defender of American Dirt. You can read Zibby's essay on the importance of being nice to books here, via Medium.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three monthly bonus episodes, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels, and Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
Welcome back to our Winter of Wayback series, in which we dig into the literary scene of the 1920s. This week: a novel about a conniving flapper who bends men to her will. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, by Anita Loos, is the source material for the 1954 Marilyn Monroe/Jane Russel movie (by way of a Broadway musical). It was also a blockbuster success in its own right, even if in historical memory it's been a bit overshadowed by the film. Edith Wharton declared it "the great American novel," and both William Faulkner and James Joyce counted themselves as fans.
Also this week: Anita Loos's longtime crush on H.L. Mencken, plus more monkey escapades (the '20s really were the heyday of monkey escapades).
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week we're celebrating 1924 by reading one of the most popular short stories of all time, "The Most Dangerous Game," by Richard Connell. Even if you've never read the story, you'll probably recognize the basic plot, which has inspired everything from a Simpsons episode to the Van Damme movie Hard Target.
We talk about how this story stacks up compared with other '20s adventure stories, why it's still being taught to middle- and high-schoolers, and whether it's a commentary on social Darwinism. Plus: monkey news, and flapper bandits!
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week we're discussing Jean Toomer's 1923 book CANE, a genre-bending mix of prose and poetry written after the author spent several months working as a substitute principal in Georgia. Many people hold the book up as a modernist classic, and an important influence on other writers during the Harlem Renaissance, but: does it stand the test of time?
Also this week: more monkey news! People in the '20s seemed fascinated with monkeys and their antics, even as anti-Darwinists seemed deeply offended at the suggestion that they'd evolved from apes.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
Since we're doing an entire season about the 1920s, at some point we had to read Zane Grey, one of the decade's best-selling authors. His book The Vanishing American was first serialized in 1922, in Ladies Home Journal, and angered some people for deigning to suggest that the Indian Schools run by the Bureau of Indian Affairs might have been less than amazing. The book's main character was loosely inspired by the experience of Jim Thorpe, who attended the Carlisle School in Pennsylvania before he became one of the world's most celebrated athletes.
We also discuss Emily Post's rules for etiquette, and "flapper cops."
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week, we're continuing our exploration of the 1920s with Robert Keable's Simon Called Peter, a mostly-forgotten novel about an Anglican priest who goes off to war and falls in love with a lady who isn't his fiancee. He also has a crisis of faith, both because of the "having sex with someone who isn't his fiancee" thing, and also the thing where the British troops don't seem to take religion all that seriously. Apparently the book was quite scandalous in its time, getting banned in some places, showing up in a murder trial, and even meriting a dismissive mention in The Great Gatsby.
Will Keable's book stand the test of time? Or will its moral conundrums seem kind of laughably quaint to a couple 21st-century readers? Also: we explore the practice of grafting skin from monkey testicles onto humans, which was apparently all the rage in the 1920s.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
We're kicking off our Winter of Wayback season, in which we travel to the past and dig up some forgotten (or under-appreciated) books and stories, and use them to learn some things about the time period. This year we'll be traveling through the 1920s, a decade neither of us knows all that much about, outside of the stereotypical images of flappers and speakeasies and Lost Generation writers smoking jazz cigarettes at Parisian cafes. For 1920 we've unearthed some old issues of Black Mask, a pulp magazine begun by H.L. Mencken as a way to fund his more literary magazine, The Smart Set.
We break down a few stories from the magazine's early issues and talk about story-writing in an age before television. We also talk about our (limited) knowledge of the 20s, and what we hope to learn this season.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
We're off this week for the holidays, but we're releasing this Patreon-only episode from September, in which we discussed THE DEAL, a sexy campus romance novel by Elle Kennedy.
If you like this episode, you can get one like it every single month for just five bucks. Check out all our bonus content at our Patreon page.
It's that special time of year again, folks. When your beloved Book Fight hosts take a break from all the very serious literary talk and dive into a sometimes-cheesy, sometimes-infuriating, always-entertaining Christmas book. In past years we've read books by Debbie Macomber, Janet Evanovich, and even Glenn Beck. This year we're checking out a book by the "queen of the beach read," Elin Hilderbrand, who a few years ago branched out with a series of books set around the holidays.
For this episode, we read the first of Hilderbrand's winter books, which introduced us to the Quinn family. Kelley Quinn owns an inn on Nantucket that he might have to sell. His second wife, Mitzi, has been carrying on an affair with the man who dresses up as Santa Claus at the inn's annual holiday party. His oldest son, Patrick, might be headed to prison for insider trading. His daughter Ava is feeling lukewarm about her boyfriend, and his middle son Nathaniel is about to propose to a hot French lady. Oh, and his youngest son might be dead in Afghanistan.
We'll be taking our usual end-of-year hiatus, BUT we'll have a special bonus episode next week for our Patreon subscribers. We read a second, much more ridiculous holiday book, about knitting vampires, and we can't wait to tell you all about it. To get that episode, and our other bonus content--including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, and episodes in our advice series, Reading the Room--all you have to do is chip in $5 a month, which helps support the show and keeps our regular episodes free.
We've spent this fall season looking at some of the best stories to teach in creative writing workshops. It's our last week, and we're talking flash fiction. Definitions of flash vary, but generally speaking the term seems to apply to short stories of fewer than 1,000 words. We discuss our approaches toward teaching flash fiction generally, and then we dive into a few specific pieces: "What Happened to the Phillips?" by Tyrese Coleman; Jacob Guajardo's "Good News Is Coming"; "When It's Human and When It's Dog" by Amy Hempel; and two short pieces by Joy Williams.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week, we're discussing stories told from multiple points of view. It can be difficult enough to successfully capture a single character's consciousness on the page, which makes our first story pick especially impressive: "The Casual Car Pool," by Katherine Bell, which originally appeared in the fall 2005 issue of Ploughshares. Our second pick takes a different tack to exploring multiple characters, keeping a distanced, fly-on-the-wall perspective: J.D. Salinger's "A Perfect Day for Bananafish."
We talk about how we approach point of view when teaching creative writing classes, particularly when it comes to the varieties of third person narration. We also talk about the difficulty of writing from multiple points of view in a single story, and whether it's something we'd encourage or discourage our students from trying.
Also this week: one last trip into the NaNoWriMo forums!
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This fall, we've been talking about the best stories to teach in a creative writing class. For this week's competition, we're discussing dialogue, and pitting a story by Mary Miller against one by George Saunders. In Miller's story, "Aunt Jemima's Old-Fashioned Pancakes," a teenage girl navigates friendship, romance, and weird dads. In Saunders' "Pastoralia," a man navigates a very strange job and a difficult coworker.
Also this week: another trip into the NaNoWriMo forums!
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week we welcome author Steph Cha (Your House Will Pay) to discuss a book she read as a kid and wanted to revisit: Amy Tan's novel The Joy Luck Club. Cha says she first read the novel in large part because she'd seen her mother reading it. Now, having written several books of her own, and having thought more deeply about Asian-American literature, what would she think of Tan's breakout book?
We also talk about basset hounds, crime novels, Los Angeles in the '90s, the politics of Nest cameras, and being a top Yelp reviewer.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week we're looking at two stories that take on current events--in one case, a story about refugees at the American-Mexico border, and in the other, a story about a white college student who gets called out after posting a picture of herself in a Confederate-flag bikini. We talk about the benefits, and potential drawbacks, of teaching stories about current political controversies in a creative writing class, and how we might approach those stories with our students. Also: in a landscape crowded with really compelling narrative nonfiction, what can fiction, specifically, add to the political discourse?
Also, it's November, which means more fun with the NaNoWriMo forums!
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week, we're on the hunt for stories that do interesting things with time. More specifically, we talk about how "time" can be a useful angle into talking about story structure in a creative writing class. Our story picks are Stuart Dybek's "Paper Lanterns" and Raymond Carver's "Are These Actual Miles?" (or, "What Is It," depending on what version of the story you've got). Also: it's November, which means it's National Novel Writing Month, which means it's time for us to visit the NaNoWriMo forums!
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week, you might say that we're on a quest to find the best quest story to teach in a creative writing class. For years, both of us have taught Sherman Alexie's "What You Pawn I Will Redeem," but for a variety of reasons--including accusations of sexual harassment against the author--we're looking for something new. Will it be Charles Yu's story "Fable," or Chris Offutt's "Out of the Woods"?
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week, we're continuing our quest for the best stories to use in a creative writing course, with pieces where setting plays a strong role: Tony Earley's "The Prophet From Jupiter" and "Roots" by Michael Crummey. We talk about how both authors evoke a strong sense of place through small details, and how to discuss that kind of world-building with creative writing students.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week, we're continuing our quest for the best stories to use in a creative writing course, with pieces about breakups: Courtney Bird, "Still Life, With Mummies" and "Cat Person" by Kristen Roupenian. You might remember the latter as "that story that went viral and briefly broke the internet," spurring hot takes from a bunch of people who seemingly hadn't read a short story in a very long time.
If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This week, we're continuing our quest for the best stories to use in a creative writing course, with pieces that incorporate magical elements: "The Healer" by Aimee Bender versus a trio of very short stories by Etgar Keret.
We talk about what the term "magical realism" actually means, and how we introduce it in the classroom. We also discuss ways to open up a fiction class to a diversity of styles and genres while still assuring that students are challenging themselves and trying new things. Plus: Are magicians creeps? And Tom revisits the work of Jim Harrison, mostly out of spite.
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.
This fall, we're exploring the canon of creative writing, trying to find the best stories to teach in creative writing classes. Each week we'll have a different theme, either a craft element or type of story, and we'll each nominate a story we think works particularly well in the classroom. We'll pit the stories against each other and by the end of the episode crown a winner.
This week we've got two second person stories: "How to Leave Hialeah," by Jennine Capo Crucet, going up against Lorrie Moore's "How to Be an Other Woman."
If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.