The Lives of Writers: Recent Episodes
Autofocus Literary, Michael Wheaton
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Erin Slaughter and Lena Ziegler interview each other about literary friendship, navigating disclosure, dignity, and responsibility in memoirs about trauma, writing with compassion about your previous self and real-life people who have harmed you, the emotional realities and real-life risks of publishing memoir, and more.
Erin Slaughter is the author of The Dead Dad Diaries(Autofocus Books, 2025). She is also the author of the short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us (Harper Perennial, 2023), and two books of poetry: The Sorrow Festival (CLASH Books, 2022) and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun (New Rivers Press, 2019). Her writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, CRAFT, The Georgia Review, Prairie Schooner, and elsewhere. Originally from Texas, she holds an MFA from Western Kentucky University and a PhD from Florida State University. She is currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Coastal Carolina University.
Lena Ziegler is the author of A Revisionist History of Loving Men(Autofocus Books, 2025). Her writing has appeared in Split Lip Magazine, Indiana Review, Literary Orphans, Miracle Monocle, Duende, Dream Pop Press, Anti-Heroin Chic, Gambling the Aisle, and others, and she has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She is a co-founder of the literary journal and press The Hunger. She holds an MFA from Western Kentucky University and a PhD from Bowling Green State University. She is the host of the music and literature podcast Reading Michael Jackson, available on all major podcast platforms. She lives in Pennsylvania with her husband. She believes in magic, the transformative power of language, and the resilience of the human heart.
Both these books are available together as part of the Autofocus Fall 2025 box.
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Conversation topics include:
-- Becoming best friends and ideal readers a decade ago
-- Starting The Hunger journal and press after MFAs and going into PhDs
-- Their memoirs with Autofocus coming out a week apart
-- Non-judgement and trust as readers, audiences, and friends
-- Lena’s A Revisionist History of Loving Men, which deals with understanding sexual abuse in a context of normalized sexual violence
-- Erin’s The Dead Dad Diaries, which deals with the murder of her father by her stepmom when Erin was 16 (and its effects as she came of age in her twenties)
-- The dangers of memoir in creating a fixed narrative for the self
-- Navigating disclosure, dignity, and responsibility in memoirs about trauma
-- Memoir as the willingness to take up space
-- The value in writing from personal experience
-- Capturing the messiness of your coming of age with compassion
-- The terminology victim and survivor and the complexity of human experience
-- Accepted or expected narratives of trauma / self-determining justice
-- Bringing compassion and humanity in writing to people who have harmed you
-- The emotional reality about publishing a personal book about family or that family may read
-- Bending form to tell these stories in memoir
-- Questioning the story you’re telling in memoir
-- The shifting nature of truth
-- More about the emotional reality about publishing a personal book about family or that family may read
-- Shame and healing (and not healing)
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
This episode of The Lives of Writers is a recast of another podcast, Reading around the Margins. Normally, in each episode of Reading Around the Margins, host Naomi Washer talks with writers, readers, translators, publishers, and booksellers about how they interact with their books as objects; how their own marginalia consciously or unconsciously informs the books they come to write; and how the experience of reading brings a book into existence. In episode 9 of Reading around the Margins, LoW host and Autofocus Books publisher Michael Wheaton interviews Naomi Washer about her new book MARGINALIA: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, which inspired her podcast (and is out now from Autofocus Books).
You can also listen to this episode, of course, straight from the source in the Reading around the Margins feed.
Autofocus Books publisher Michael Wheaton presents brief readings and various interview clips with the authors of the three Autofocus spring 2025 new releases: Erin Dorney (Yes I Am Human I Know You Were Wondering), Shayne Terry (Leave: A Postpartum Account), and Teresa Carmody (A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others).
Brief readings: "Day 27" by Erin Dorney, "Stitched Part II" by Shayne Terry, and "A New Writing Friend" (excerpt) by Teresa Carmody.
Interview clips include answers to questions about life before and after writing their books, insights gained about their subjects through the process of writing their books, and thoughts on the craft and forms of artful autobiographical writing.
Support Autofocus Books by purchasing The Spring 2025 Box and/or The Autofocus Digital Pass.
Podcast theme: "Low Life" (instrumental) by Yeah Yeah Cool Cool (the musical project of Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac, from Autofocus Books). Find Nagel's books at autofocusbooks.com.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Andrew Bertaina interviews Nick Rees Gardner.
Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place, out now from Autofocus Books, and the short story collection One Person Away From You (2021), which won the Moon City Short Fiction Award.
Nick Rees Gardner is the author of the story collection Delinquents and Other Escape Attempts (Madrona Books, 2024). He's also the author of the novella Hurricane Trinity, a book of poetry, So Marvelously Far (2019), and a chapbook Decomposed (2017).
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Full conversation topics include:
-- buying a beer & wine store
-- morning vs evening writing
-- wanting to write
-- running
-- grandma as childhood poetry teacher
-- emo poetry in high school
-- drugs in college
--short stories
-- dropping out for rehab
-- the short story collection DELINQUENTS
-- from novel to story collection
-- time
-- knowing when a story is done
-- rewriting drafts
-- slowing down
-- process
-- reviewing books
-- influence
-- rhythm
-- subverting the narrative of rehab
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Podcast theme music also provided by Mike Nagel. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jason McCall interviews Tasha Coryell.
Tasha Coryell is the author of the debut novel Love Letters to A Serial Killer. Her forthcoming novel, Matchmaking for Psychopaths, is now available for preorder.
Jason McCall is the author of the essay collection Razed by TV Sets (Autofocus, 2024) and the poetry collections What Shot Did You Ever Take (co-written with Brian Oliu); A Man Ain’t Nothin’; Two-Face God; Mother, Less Child ; Dear Hero; I Can Explain; and Silver. He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop.
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Conversation topics include:
--seasons / the cold
-- ambience videos
-- wanting to be a writer at eight
-- re-shifting priorities
-- moving into the thriller genre
-- learning to write novels
-- relaxing about publishing
-- running
-- unpublished novels
-- writing while succeeding
-- the debut novel Love Letters to a Serial Killer
-- the journey of the manuscript to publication
-- a very millennial character
-- academia
-- reading about serial killers / true crime
-- enjoying writing the character
-- writing an entertaining book
-- the forthcoming Matchmaking for Psychopaths
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jason McCall interviews Juan Carlos Reyes.
Juan Carlos Reyes is the author of the story collection, Three Alarm Fire, which is out on October 22, and the novella A Summer's Lynching. His stories, poems and essays have appeared in Florida Review, Waccamaw Journal, and Hawai’i Review, and more. He has been the recipient of the Gar LaSalle Artist Trust Storyteller Award, a PEN USA Emerging Voices Fellowship, and a Jack Straw Writers Fellowship, among others.
Jason McCall is the author of the essay collection Razed by TV Sets (Autofocus, 2024) and the poetry collections What Shot Did You Ever Take (co-written with Brian Oliu); A Man Ain’t Nothin’; Two-Face God; Mother, Less Child ; Dear Hero; I Can Explain; and Silver. He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He holds an MFA from the University of Miami. He is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and he currently teaches at the University of North Alabama.
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Conversation topics include:
-- pre-pub ramp-up
-- reading as gateway to writing
-- the influence of children on reading habits
-- being born in Ecuador in the 1980's
-- moving to New Jersey as a kid
-- wanting to become a writer
-- owning it and changes majors
-- vicarious creativity
-- trying to get writing work
-- entering the world of writers
-- working temp jobs
-- from getting an MFA to tenure-track teaching
-- doing stuff in Seattle
-- working with Hinton Publishing
-- the new story collection Three Alarm Fire
-- overlapping voice
-- triptychs
-- (re)organizing the collection
-- fun in the nuances of craft
-- narrators as people
-- finishing a new draft
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Drew Hawkins interviews Jami Attenberg.
Jami Attenberg is a New York Times bestselling author of now eight books of fiction, including The Middlesteins and All Grown Up; a memoir, I Came All This Way to Meet You; and 1000 Words: A Writer's Guide to Staying Creative, Focused, and Productive All Year Round. She is the founder of the annual #1000WordsofSummer project, and maintains the popular Craft Talk newsletter year-round. Jami's new novel is A Reason to See You Again.
Drew Hawkins is a writer and journalist in New Orleans. He's the producer and host of Micro, a podcast for short but powerful writing. You can find his work on NPR, The Guardian, Scalawag Magazine, HAD, and elsewhere. His essay, "Bottom of the X," came out recently in the summer 2024 issue of Autofocus.
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Full conversation topics include:
--Jami's 10th book, A Reason to See You Again
-- ground rules for the new book
-- first lines
-- family games
-- loss
-- time in the novel
-- phones and social
-- perspective and interiority
-- "screen time" for characters
-- New Orleans
-- a perfect writing day
-- 1,000 words
-- readings
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Drew Hawkins interviews Kirsten Reneau.
Kirsten Reneau is the author the debut full-length essay collection, Sensitive Creatures, which is out now with Belle Point Press. of two chapbooks, and her work has been published in The Threepenny Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Reed Magazine, and others.
Drew Hawkins is a writer and journalist in New Orleans. He's the producer and host of Micro, a podcast for short but powerful writing. You can find his work on NPR, The Guardian, Scalawag Magazine, HAD, and elsewhere. His essay, "Bottom of the X," came out recently in the summer 2024 issue of Autofocus.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- Kirsten's debut book Sensitive Creatures
-- three different selves in three different stages
-- sexual assault and gendered violence
-- writing the very personal
-- infusing nature in the writing
-- images and animals
-- younger self as ideal reader
-- ideal writing situations
-- post-writing situations
-- stages of the manuscript into final book
-- editing literary mags and writing
-- organizing a collection
-- cicada season
-- turning the page with CNF
-- the thing that scares you
-- implicating others
-- reading magical realism
-- care
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Kristine Langley Mahler interviews Dennis James Sweeney.
Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of three nonfiction books: A Calendar Is a Snakeskin (Autofocus Books, 2023), Curing Season: Artifacts (West Virginia University Press, 2022), and the erasure essay collection Teen Queen Training (forthcoming with Autofocus Books in 2026). Kristine is the director and publisher of Split/Lip Press.
Dennis James Sweeney is a cross-genre writer. His first book, In the Antarctic Circle, won the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize and was a Debut Poetry Book of 2021 in Poets & Writers. You’re the Woods Too, his second book, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller and a finalist for the Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Prize. Most recently, The Rolodex Happeningswon the Stillhouse Press Novella Prize.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- slowing production
-- reading before bed
-- Dennis's forthcoming book How to Submit
-- small presses
-- hybridity
-- Dennis's first books
-- Dennis's essay Ghost/Home
-- photographs
-- Crohn's
-- Dennis's new novella, The Rolodex Happenings
-- imaginings and inventions and experiments
-- performance art
-- the gaps in our writing
-- artmaking
-- the gong moment
-- meaning-making
-- the real in the fiction
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Kaycie Hall interviews Puloma Ghosh.
Kaycie Hall is the lead editor of our online journal Autofocus. She's also a writer and literary translator, whose work has appeared in Peach Mag, Neutral Spaces, Triangle House Review, and other journals.
Puloma Ghosh is the author of the debut short story collection Mouth(Astra House, 2024). Her work has appeared previously in One Story, CRAFT Literary, Cutleaf, and other publications.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- starting a new job after a layoff
-- balancing writing and illustration
-- elementary school notebooks
-- the short story collection MOUTH
-- putting together a collection after an MFA
-- being generous to a past self
-- Puloma's story "The Fig Tree"
-- story changes through drafts
-- elements of horror and supernatural
-- Puloma's stories "Anomaly" and "Natalia"
-- ordering the stories
-- working on novels
-- green M&M fanfic
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Joshua James Amberson interviews Tomas Moniz.
Tomas Moniz is the author of the novels Big Familia and, most recently, All Friends Are Necessary. He also edited the popular Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies. He currently teaches at Berkeley City College and the Antioch MFA program.
Joshua James Amberson is the author of Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes, How to Forget Almost Everything: A Novel, a series of chapbooks, and the long-running Basic Paper Airplane zine series. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he runs the Antiquated Future online variety store and record label.
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FULL CONVERSATION topics include:
-- engaging with an audience post-publication
-- a book tour / honeymoon
-- working with a bigger press for the 1st time
-- zines and zine community
-- working on multiple projects
-- trying and failing to sell a book
-- growing up as not a reader or writer
-- the path to early zines and RAD DAD
-- writing and receiving letters
-- the new novel All Friends Are Necessary
-- editorial collaboration
-- playing with best and worst selves in fiction
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Erin Slaughter interviews Jenny Irish.
Jenny Irish is the author, most recently, of Hatch. She is also the author of the hybrid collections Common Ancestor and Tooth Box, the short-story collection I Am Faithful, and the chapbook Lupine.
Erin Slaughter is the author of the short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us and the poetry collections The Sorrow Festival, and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Realize That You Are the Sun. Her memoir, The Dead Dad Diaries, will be out with Autofocus Books in the fall of 2025.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- growing up in Maine / living in Arizona
-- an abandoned house in the woods
-- childhood imagination and stories
-- an unexpected MFA
-- working in academia
-- Jenny's recent essay in Salon, "Teacher Spice"
-- inhabiting a body
-- society's grading of appearance
-- scrutiny of the body in the workplace
-- Jenny's new book of poetry, Hatch
-- responding to the Trump presidency
-- the decision to have or not have a child
-- a metal womb and a cast of characters
--the violent division in America
-- the decision to stay in or leave academia
-- genre and hybridity
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
In today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews Ursula Villarreal-Moura.
Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self Crippling and Like Happiness. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast, Washington Square, Story, Bennington Review, Wigleaf Top 50, and Gulf Coast.
Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She’s also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
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Conversation topics include:
-- teaching college English remotely
-- bilingual teaching with AmeriCorps
-- learning to read like learning to drive
-- the switch from poetry to fiction
-- endometriosis
-- finding a community through flash
-- selling a novel that didn't sell
-- the debut novel Like Happiness
-- two timelines
-- not writing in third person
-- ambiguity
-- stories we tell ourselves
--looking away
-- healing in the right environment
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jason McCall interviews Brooke Champagne.
Brooke Champagne is the author of Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy. Her writing appears widely in literary journals and has received various awards, including the inaugural William Bradley Prize for the Essay for her work “Exercises.” Her essays have been selected as Notables in several editions of Best American Essays. She is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in Prose. She lives with her husband and children in Tuscaloosa, where she is an Assistant Professor of English in the MFA Program in creative writing at the University of Alabama.
Jason McCall is the author of the essay collection Razed by TV Sets (Autofocus, 2024) and the poetry collections What Shot Did You Ever Take (co-written with Brian Oliu); A Man Ain’t Nothin’; Two-Face God; Mother, Less Child (co-winner of the 2013 Paper Nautilus Vella Chapbook Prize); Dear Hero, (winner of the 2012 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and co-winner of the 2013 Etchings Press Whirling Prize); I Can Explain; and Silver. He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He holds an MFA from the University of Miami. He is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and he currently teaches at the University of North Alabama.
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Conversation topics include:
-- finding time
-- 20+ years of teaching
-- reading turning into writing
-- Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy
-- trying to quit writing
-- putting together an essay collection
-- time's role in craft
-- approaching the page in different stages of life
-- sports and new projects
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Mike Nagel interviews Andrew Bertaina.
Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place, out now from Autofocus Books, and the short story collection One Person Away From You (2021), which won the Moon City Short Fiction Award.
Mike Nagel is the author of Duplexand Culdesac (Autofocus Books, 2022 and 2024). He also wrote the music for this podcast and a column called The Unintentionalist for the literary magazine Little Engines.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- selves on the page
-- hyperfocusing
-- The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place
-- reading as a pathway to writing
-- grading your own writing
-- essays vs. fiction
-- modes of essays
-- mind as setting
-- representing others in an essay
-- representing yourself in an essay
-- a good catalyst
-- what goes in and what goes out
-- speed
-- writing and not writing every day
-- getting and not getting stuck
-- valuing the reader
-- the essay "On Trains" specifically
-- gratitude
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Podcast theme music also provided by Mike Nagel. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode ofThe Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Mallory Smart.
Mallory Smart is the author of the books I Keep My Visions to Myself, The Only Living Girl in Chicago, I Want to Feel Happy But I Only Feel _____, and The Writer. She's the editor-in-chief of Maudlin House and host of the podcast Textual Healing, where you can find a recent episode with the roles of this conversation reversed and hear Mallory interview Jeff.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. His novel And Yet was reissued this year by Future Tense Books. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- Chicagoland
-- growing up in Chicago
-- writing in high school
-- four siblings
-- history and philosophy
-- logic and therapy
-- writing a poetry collection
-- the preference for narrative
-- the story of Maudlin House
-- relationships with authority
-- writing a first novel
-- maladaptive daydreaming
-- an app that forces you to write
-- a novel in two weeks
-- fear of saying the wrong thing
-- pressure and nostalgia
-- editorial and publicity
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Aaron Burch interviews Josh Denslow.
Josh Denslow is the author of the collection Not Everyone Is Special (7.13 Books) and the novel Super Normal (Stillhouse Press). Some recent stories have appeared in The Commuter, Okay Donkey. Pithead Chapel, and The Rumpus. He is the Email Marketing Manager for Bookshop.org, and he has read and edited for SmokeLong Quarterly for over a decade.
Aaron Burch is the author of the essay collection A Kind of In-Betweenand editor of How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, both from Autofocus Books. He's also the author of several other books, including the novel, Year of the Buffalo. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD.
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Full conversation topics include:
--moving the family to Barcelona
-- learning a new language
'-- formative places and home
-- degrees of nostalgia
-- moving around and reading
-- going to film school & LA
-- the desire to share creative work
-- discovering the literary world
-- rejection and beginning attempts to publish
-- the publication of Josh's novel, Super Normal
-- lots and lots of drafts and versions
-- humor adding to the reality of fiction
-- superheroes outside of Marvel
-- Josh's story "Infinite Possibilities Outside the Screen"
-- quality and fun
-- channeling a voice
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Teresa Carmody interviews Kristen E. Nelson.
Kristen E. Nelson is a queer writer, performer, and community builder. In addition to In the Away Time(Autofocus Books, 2024), she is the author of the length of this gap (Damaged Goods, August 2018) and two chapbooks: sometimes I gets lost and is grateful for noises in the dark (Dancing Girl, 2017) and Write, Dad (Unthinkable Creatures, 2012). She has published creative and critical writing in Feminist Studies, Bombay Gin, Denver Quarterly, Drunken Boat, Tarpaulin Sky Journal, Trickhouse, and Everyday Genius, among others. Kristen is the founder of Casa Libre en la Solana, a non-profit writing center in Tucson, Arizona, where she worked as the Executive Director for 14 years and the co-founder of Four Queens with Selah Saterstrom. Kristen is currently a Ph.D. student and graduate student instructor at the University of California – Santa Cruz in the Literature Department’s creative/critical writing concentration.
Teresa Carmody’s writing includes fiction, creative nonfiction, inter-arts collaborations, and hybrid forms. She is the author of three books and four chapbooks, including Maison Femme: a fiction (2015) and The Reconception of Marie (2020). Her work has appeared in The Collagist, LitHub, WHR, Two Serious Ladies, Diagram, St. Petersburg Review, Faultline, and was selected for the &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing and by Entropy for its Best Online Articles and Essays list of 2019. Carmody is co-founding editor of Les Figues Press, an imprint of LARB Books in Los Angeles, and director of Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas. Her forthcoming book A Healthy Interest in the Lives of Others is out early next year with Autofocus Books.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- the first event for In the Away Time
-- imperfect queer and trans narratives
-- calling in community
-- projects conceived in love
--other voices in In the Away Time
-- getting a PhD later in life
-- hybridity and divinations
-- the limits of the body
-- constraint and the autobiographical
-- the timescape of In the Away Time
-- the roles we play in our own disasters
-- autotheory and autoethnography
-- knowing when the form is the form
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton, author of Home Movies.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Emily Adrian interviews Justin Taylor.
Justin Taylor's most recent book is the novel Reboot. He is also the author of the memoir Riding with the Ghost, the novel The Gospel of Anarchy, and two story collections: Everything Here Is the Best Thing Ever and Flings. His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Harper's, the Oxford American, and the Sewanee Review.
Emily Adrian is the author of several novels and the forthcoming memoir Daughterhood. Her work has appeared in Granta, Joyland, EPOCH, Alta Journal, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- growing up as a child actor
-- always wanting to be a writer
-- a father who read and read into his work
-- editing a couple Donald Barthelme anthologies
-- the leadup to his first few books
-- the new novel REBOOT
-- the role, limits, and manipulation of realism in his work
-- inviting the supernatural
-- the show within the novel
-- a bottle chapter
-- The Hungry Tiger
-- Dawson's Creek
-- Judy Blume moments for middle aged men
-- writing a short story again
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton, author of Home Movies.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Lucas Mann.
Lucas Mann is the author of the new book, Attachments: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances, out just this week from University of Iowa Press. He is also the author of the books Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere. He teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and co-owns Riffraff Bookstore & Bar in Providence, RI.
Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of The Lives of Writers. His essay Home Movies is out now from Bunny Presse.
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FULL CONVERSATION topics include:
-- becoming co-owner of Riffraff Bookstore & Bar
-- literary community in Providence, RI
-- figuring out how writing fits into a new life
-- the gap between the life and the writing about the life
-- his mom's non-fiction books for children
-- growing up with performers as a youngest kid
-- ambition (and having less of it now)
-- ATTACHMENTS: Essays on Fatherhood and Other Performances
-- writing about intimacy and the mediation of it
-- getting long essays right
-- juggling across an essay and a book
-- framing imaginative work as an essay
-- writing about parenthood, including the ugly parts
-- resembling a real human being
-- body image
-- overlapping thinking and feeling
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Drew Hawkins interviews Maurice Carlos Ruffin.
Maurice Carlos Ruffin is the author, most recently, of the historical novel, The American Daughters. He is also the author of The Ones Who Don’t Say They Love You, which was longlisted for the Story Prize and was a finalist for the Ernest J. Gaines Award for Literary Excellence, and We Cast a Shadow, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the PEN Open Book Award, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize and was longlisted for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize and International Dublin Literary Award. A recipient of an Iowa Review Award in fiction, he has been published in the Virginia Quarterly Review, AGNI, the Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, and Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas.
Drew Hawkins is a writer and journalist in New Orleans. He's the producer and host of Micro, a podcast for short but powerful writing. You can find his work on NPR, The Guardian, Scalawag Magazine, HAD, and elsewhere.
Today's episode is brought to you in part by the podcast Micro, where today you can hear Maurice read on the new episode, available wherever you listen to podcasts like this one.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- book tour
-- a previous life as a lawyer and restaurant-owner
-- becoming a writer
-- overcoming imposter syndrome
-- paces of production and practice
-- distraction as being useful
-- the reading you do while writing
-- approaching novels and/or stories
-- New Orleans
-- the new novel THE AMERICAN DAUGHTERS
-- research
-- knowing who you are
-- writing as a man about women
-- jumping through time and sound
-- POV
-- freedom and loss
-- a forthcoming book
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton, author of Home Movies.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Lena Crown interviews Richard Scott Larson.
Richard Scott Larson is the author of the memoirThe Long Hallway (UW Press). He has received fellowships from MacDowell and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and his creative and critical work has appeared in The Sun Magazine, Los Angeles Review of Books, Harvard Review, and other journals and anthologies.
Lena Crown is a book editor for us at Autofocus Books. Her essays are published or forthcoming in The Rumpus, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Narratively, North American Review, The Offing, and elsewhere, and her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Boiler, Poet Lore, No Contact, and Variant Lit.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- blocking out time to write
-- doing residencies
-- horror movies and mass-market fiction as a kid
-- writing as a critic and with the NBCC
-- the role of film in his life and the book
-- a crisis of fiction
-- memoir vs book-length essay
-- the new memoir THE LONG HALLWAY
-- gender, sexuality, and horror
-- visibility and hiding queerness
-- masks and Michael Myers in Halloween
-- horror tropes appearing in memoir
-- loneliness and observation
-- film form
-- fear and shame
-- the Midwestern suburbs
-- epiphany, revelation, and resolution (or lack of)
-- examining our own cruelties
-- writing about family
-- the next book and gymnasts
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton, author of Home Movies.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Aaron Burch interviews Jason McCall.
Jason McCall is the author of the essay collection Razed by TV Sets (Autofocus, 2024) and the poetry collections What Shot Did You Ever Take (co-written with Brian Oliu); A Man Ain’t Nothin’; Two-Face God; Mother, Less Child (co-winner of the 2013 Paper Nautilus Vella Chapbook Prize); Dear Hero, (winner of the 2012 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and co-winner of the 2013 Etchings Press Whirling Prize); I Can Explain; and Silver. He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He holds an MFA from the University of Miami. He is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and he currently teaches at the University of North Alabama.
Aaron Burch is the author of the essay collection A Kind of In-Betweenand editor of How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, both from Autofocus Books. He's also the author of several other books, including the novel, Year of the Buffalo. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- a recent bout with cancer
-- the rhythm of art and community
-- the pleasures of teaching
-- realizing you can write about your cultural interests
-- getting into history and mythology and storytelling
-- getting into poetry after fiction
-- approaching writing as a fan
-- sports and pop culture
-- the new essay collection RAZED BY TV SETS
-- the contradictions of fandom
-- collective celebration
-- playing with your offhand
-- new work about John Henry
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
In today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews Julia Hannafin.
Julia Hannafin is the author of the debut novel Cascade (Great Place Books, 2024). They also write for television.
Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She’s also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
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Conversation topics include:
-- writing in LA
-- writing for screen and audio
-- journaling as a kid
-- truth in fiction
-- Julia's first novel CASCADE
-- expanding a short story
-- the novel before the "first novel"
-- quiet drama
-- a young narrator with a thread of danger
-- publishing as the first novel by Great Place Books
-- sharks in the Farallon Islands
-- researching the book
-- predator/prey
-- internal/external worlds
-- desire, gender, identity, and place
-- addiction, obsession, and denial
-- time and pressure
-- new work and ghosts
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Joshua James Amberson interviews Jeff Alessandrelli.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. His novel And Yet is out in April 2024 with Future Tense Books. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
Joshua James Amberson is the author of Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes (Perfect Day Publishing), How to Forget Almost Everything: A Novel (Korza Books), a series of chapbooks on Two Plum Press, as well as the long-running Basic Paper Airplane zine series. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he runs the Antiquated Future online variety store and record label.
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FULL CONVERSATION topics include:
-- recording live in PDX
-- past work in publishing and literary community
-- the previous podcast The Steer
-- the beginnings of Jeff's novel And Yet
-- working in different forms of poetry and prose
-- the collapse of SPD
-- the issues at PANK that led to pulling his novel from print
-- the reissue of the novel now with Future Tense Books
-- revisiting a self from five years ago
-- writing as a publisher
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Zachary Pace.
Zachary Pace is a writer and editor whose first book isI Sing to Use the Waiting: A Collection of Essays About the Women Singers Who've Made Me Who I Am(Two Dollar Radio, 2024), and whose writing has been published in the Baffler, BOMB, Bookforum, Boston Review, Frieze magazine, Interview magazine, Literary Hub, the Los Angeles Review of Books, the PEN Poetry Series, the Yale Review, and elsewhere.
Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer ofThe Lives of Writers. His essay Home Movies is out now from Bunny Presse.
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FULL CONVERSATION topics include:
-- going into the office
-- working in publishing
-- challenges of living in NYC
-- finding a subject
-- moving to essay from poetry
-- early writing tied up in other media
-- music as gateway into poetry
-- the new essay collection I SING TO USE THE WAITING
-- trouble
-- other people as mirrors
-- research in the writing process
-- growing up on media pre-internet
-- child psychology
-- celebrating the self and others
-- choosing essay subjects in a collection
-- continuing to write about music and listening
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Lippmann interviews Ben Tanzer.
Ben Tanzer is the author of the short story collection UPSTATE, the science fiction novel Orphans, and the essay collections Lost in Space and Be Cool, and most recently the novel The Missing, which is out now from 7.13 Books. Among many other things, he also produces and hosts This Podcast Will Change Your Life.
Sara Lippmann is the author of the novel Lech (Tortoise Books) and the story collections Doll Palace (re-released by 7.13 Books) and Jerks (Mason Jar Press). Her fiction has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her essays have appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, Catapult, The Lit Hub and elsewhere.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- Chicago/the Midwest & upstate NY
-- small town insularity
-- Ben's new novel The Missing
-- growing up with cool parents
-- resignation in fiction, not in life
-- returning to the novel form
-- time
-- regimen
-- Ben's father's influence on his creative life
-- not being precious
-- Ben and Sara meeting
-- persistence and prioritizing yourself
-- deciding to write and detaching from the results
-- a new non-fiction project
-- learning patience
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Podcast theme music also provided by Mike Nagel. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Claire Donato.
Claire Donato is the author of Burial, a fiction novella, and The Second Body, a full-length collection of poems, and most recently Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts, a collection of fiction. Currently, she works as Acting Chairperson of Writing at Pratt Institute, where she received the 2020-2021 Distinguished Teacher Award.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. His novel And Yet is being reissued this year by Future Tense Books. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
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PART ONE topics include:
-- writing desks and locations
-- being a "legend of underground literature"
-- starting to publish young
-- a music background
-- writing and not writing
-- thinking about selling a book
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PART TWO topics include:
-- Claire's new book Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts
--"fauxtofiction" and autofiction
-- MFK Fisher
-- cooking and co-ops
-- friendships in literature
-- friendships in adulthood
-- psychoanalysis
-- publishing with a bigger press
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Sean Enfield.
Sean Enfield is the author of debut collection of essays, Holy American Burnout! (Split/Lip Press, 2023). He serves as an Assistant Non Fiction Editor at Terrain.org, and his own work has been published in Reed Magazine, Hayden’s Ferry, Witness Magazine, Tahoma Literary Review, and The Rumpus, among others.
Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of The Lives of Writers. His essay Home Movies is out now from Bunny Presse.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- getting a PhD after a couple years off an MFA
-- getting thrown into teaching and gardening
-- getting into writing and music as a kid in Dallas
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- the process of writing and publishing Holy American Burnout!
-- dropping the façade and accidentally getting into non-fiction
-- writing about the classroom
-- information and news overload
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- starting with form
-- Baldwin
-- de-emphasizing the nation state
--writing while promoting
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews Joshua Marie Wilkinson.
Born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, Joshua Marie Wilkinson is a poet, novelist, and filmmaker. His debut novel, Trouble Finds You, was published by Fonograf Editions (2023). He is also the author of nine books of poetry, including Selenography, Swamp Isthmus, and Meadow Slasher. His work has appeared in Poetry, The Believer, Tin House, Pen America, and in nearly two dozen anthologies. He has edited several collections of essays, including Anne Carson: Ecstatic Lyre, Poets on Teaching, and The Force of What's Possible with Lily Hoang.
Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She’s also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- working as a therapist
-- writing while raising a kid
-- a previous life as a poet and teacher
-- the move into writing fiction
-- therapy and narrative
-- growing up in and living again in the PNW
-- early poetry books
-- the disappearances of small presses
-- not writing a "poet's novel"
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- Joshua's first novel Trouble Finds You
-- writing a "misguided" character
-- a short story that kept getting longer
-- plotting and telling a story
-- suspense
-- animals and pets in a narrative
-- not having a smartphone
-- other novels
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Mike Nagel interviews Brian Allen Carr.
Brian Allen Carr is the author of eight books, most recently Bad Foundations, out now from CLASH Books. His other books include Opioid, Indiana, Short Bus, and Motherfucking Sharks.
Mike Nagel is the author of Duplexand Culdesac (Autofocus Books, 2022 and 2024). He also wrote the music for this podcast and a column called The Unintentionalist for the literary magazine Little Engines.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- sobriety
-- Plano, TX
-- retiring from middle school football
-- a family of preachers
-- Edgar Allan Poe
-- the first publication
-- the movie made from it
-- sustaining a creative life
-- a kind of arrogance
-- learning the lane
-- the new book BAD FOUNDATIONS
-- the invention of the elevator brake
-- grounded theory and work
-- sales
--putting things into the world
-- information and property
-- engaging or not in a political way
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Podcast theme music also provided by Mike Nagel. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Michael Wheaton.
Michael Wheaton is the author of the essay Home Movies (Bunny Presse, 2024). His writing has appeared in Essay Daily, DIAGRAM, Burrow Press Review, Rejection Letters, HAD, and other online journals. He publishes Autofocus Books and produces this podcast.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. His novel And Yet is being reissued this year by Future Tense Books. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
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FULL INTERVIEW topics include:
-- what in retrospect is quite obviously a mid-life crisis
-- experiences with literary community before Autofocus
-- early life and reading and television and the arts
-- pursuing music for a little while a long while ago
-- writing fiction before, through, and after an MFA
-- the move to writing more autobiographically
-- becoming a parent and ways it changed the art
-- deciding to become a publisher
-- seeing yourself as more than one thing
-- HOME MOVIES and its earlier versions
-- discovering a writing process through the attempts
-- the "Office Hours" part of the book about a planned community in Florida
-- new and old media's effects and the difficulty of seeing them
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Kaycie Hall interviews Lauren Elkin.
Kaycie Hall is the lead editor of our online journal Autofocus. She's also a writer and literary translator, whose work has appeared in Peach Mag, Neutral Spaces, Triangle House Review, and other journals.
Lauren Elkin is a writer and translator of many books, most recently the author of Art Monsters: Unruly Bodies in Feminist Art and the UK translator of Simone de Beauvoir's previously unpublished novel The Inseparables. UK and US versions of her novel Scaffolding are coming out later this year.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- winding down publication publicity
-- growing up focused on the performing arts
-- Lauren's previous book Flâneuse
-- Lauren's new book Art Monsters
-- intervening in the conversation around feminism
-- the temptation to make the book about one person
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- pregnancy shifting the shape of the book
-- the pandemic contributing to the shifting
-- Lauren's translation work
-- managing reading hours (or not)
-- a forthcoming novel
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Erin Slaughter interviews Chin-Sun Lee.
Chin-Sun Lee is the author of the debut novel Upcountry (Unnamed Press 2023), listed among Publishers Weekly’s Big Indie Books of Fall 2023, and is one of Poets & Writers’5 Over 50 for 2023. She’s also a contributor to Let Me Say This: A Dolly Parton Poetry Anthology (Madville Publishing 2023) and the New York Times bestselling anthology Women in Clothes (Blue Rider Press/Penguin 2014). Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Electric Literature, Literary Hub, The Georgia Review, The Rumpus, Joyland, and The Believer Logger, among other publications. More at www.chinsunlee.com.
Erin Slaughter is the author of the short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us and the poetry collections The Sorrow Festival, and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Realize That You Are the Sun. She is the managing editor of Autofocus and was formerly the editor/co-founder of literary journal and chapbook press The Hunger. Her writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, CRAFT, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- finishing a first book tour
-- seeing a first novel go into the world
--previous work in the fashion industry
-- life in LA after movie young from Korea
-- arts and writing growing up
--publishing a debut novel in your 50's
- pressure and expectations on following-up a novel
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- Chin-Sun's debut novel Upcountry
-- balancing three voices
-- process changing from short stories to the novel
-- process changing from completed book to WIP
-- cults
-- class
-- the unknown
-- penance
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- place as character
-- writing about 2009/10
-- the possibility of writing something into being by accident
-- living in New Orleans
-- the next novel
--Erin's WIP
--the beauty and cosmetic industry
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Trey Moody.
Trey Moody is the author of the poetry collection Autoblivion, which is out now from Conduit Books, and Thought That Nature (Sarabande Books, 2014). He's been the recipient of numerous awards including the Kathryn A. Morton Prize in Poetry, and his poems have appeared in The Atlantic, The Believer, and New England Review.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. His novel And Yet is being reissued this year by Future Tense Books. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- growing up in San Antonio
-- early moments that led to writing
-- getting into guitar
-- early creative writing experiences
-- overcoming 19 MFA app rejections
-- formative mentors and editing a journal
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- the decision to get a PhD
-- moving to Nebraska
-- the path to Trey's first book Thought That Nature
-- poetic interests early on vs. now
-- the optimistic nihilist
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- life in the nine years between books
-- the new book Autoblivion
-- a thin line between speaker/author
-- putting a book together while not a student
-- publishing and stubbornness
-- writing about a daughter
-- writing about life in the Anthropocene
-- time and Agnes Martin
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Lena Crown interviews Jehanne Dubrow.
Jehanne Dubrow is the author of nine books of poems, including most recently, Wild Kingdom (Louisiana State University Press, 2021), and three books of creative nonfiction, throughsmoke: an essay in notes (New Rivers Press, 2019), Taste: A Book of Small Bites (Columbia University Press, 2022), and Exhibitions: Essays on Art & Atrocity(University of New Mexico Press, 2023).
Lena Crown is a book editor for us at Autofocus Books. Her essays are published or forthcoming in The Rumpus, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Narratively, North American Review, The Offing, and elsewhere, and her poems have appeared in Bellevue Literary Review, The Boiler, Poet Lore, No Contact, and Variant Lit.
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Full conversation topics include:
-- writing routines and book juggling
-- switching modes of writing/thinking
-- teaching trauma writing
-- starting as an encouraged visual artist
-- Rothko
-- writing young
-- working on Taste: A Book of Small Bites and then Exhibitions: Essays on Art and Atrocity
-- the research process for a braided essay
-- rendering place and many different countries
-- the "snapshots" and "galleries" in the book
-- ekphrasis
-- using the body and becoming a surface
-- finding (and using) different forms
-- the problem of beauty
-- possession and dispossession
-- discomfort
-- fact and pathos
-- organization and ordering
-- flash/prose poem form
-- her next book Civilians
-- frivolity
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton, author of Home Movies.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs.
LaTasha N. Nevada Diggs is a poet and sound artist. She is the author of the poetry collections, Village (Coffee House Press, 2023) and TwERK (Belladonna, 2013), in addition to three chapbooks. Her interdisciplinary work has been featured at the Museum of Modern Art, Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Walker Art Center.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. His novel And Yet is being reissued this year by Future Tense Books. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- growing up and still living in Harlem
-- living in the Bay Area and other places too
-- freelance music writing for a time, then going to school
-- first developing with play
-- early life as a poet
--trying out different things while going to writing programs
-- getting an MFA but finding buddies in Cave Canem
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- the success of her first full-length poetry collection TwERK
-- the uncertain path to the first collection
-- residencies
-- the new poetry book VILLAGE, out last year with Coffee House
-- a decade between books
-- the complexity and modes of VILLAGE
-- giving time
-- a webinar series related to the book
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Aaron Burch interviews Lindsay Hunter.
Lindsay Hunter is the author most recently of the novel Hot Springs Drive(Roxane Gay Books, 2023). She's also the author of two story collections, Daddy's and Don't Kiss Me, and the novels Ugly Girls and Eat Only When You're Hungry. She hosts the literary podcast I'm A Writer, But.
Aaron Burch is the author of the essay collection A Kind of In-Betweenand editor of How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, both from Autofocus Books. He's also the author of several other books, including the novel, Year of the Buffalo. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- Lindsay's love of Halloween
-- Lindsay at 16
-- the prospect of sex as teen with a Christian upbringing
-- first wanting to be an actress but always writing
-- Lindsay's history hosting Quickies! and performing readings
-- writing that's fun to write
-- her book DADDY'S coming out of the reading series
-- truly seeing in your writing
-- working with Zach Dodson of Featherproof Books
-- co-starting the podcast I'M A WRITER BUT
-- recently experiencing burnout
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PART TWO, topics include:
--a reading of the beginning of HOT SPRINGS DRIVE
-- working with Roxane Gay on the novel for her new imprint
-- figuring out the structure of the new novel
-- trusting the plot and pushing herself
-- leveling up
-- writing about sex and food and the body
-- point of view in the novel
-- accidentally writing a mystery
-- new works in progress
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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Kevin Maloney interviews Mike Nagel.
Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex (Autofocus Books, 2022) and now the author of Culdesac (Autofocus Books, 2024). He also wrote the music for this podcast and a column called The Unintentionalist for the literary magazine Little Engines.
Kevin Maloney is the author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim (Two Dollar Radio, 2023), Horse Girl Fever (CLASH Books, 2024), and Cult of Loretta (Lazy Fascist, 2015).
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Full conversation topics include:
-- a new temporary living situation
-- writing junk mail for a living
-- Vonnegut
-- writing the Unintentionalist column for Little Engines
-- starting in music early and writing later
-- early influential books
-- Mike's surprise breakout hit DUPLEX
-- quitting drinking after publishing the book
-- the new book CULDESAC, a sequel of sorts to DUPLEX
-- the troubling titling the new book
-- following up a first book that gets some attention
-- writing as a way to bring meaning to mundanity
-- thinking about health in mid-life and in the new book
-- the comedy in Mike's work
-- revising and not knowing if something is working
-- seamless drifting and losing the point
-- unintentionalism
-- Jamba Juice as character
-- the high stakes of the every day
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Podcast theme music also provided by Mike Nagel. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
Autofocus Books authors Aaron Burch, Kristine Langley Mahler, Danny Caine, and Holly Pelesky read selections from their books and interview each other briefly about the work they've read.
Aaron Burch is the author of the essay collection A Kind of In-Betweenand editor of How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, both from Autofocus Books. He's also the author of several other books, including the novel, Year of the Buffalo. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD.
Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of two nonfiction books: A Calendar Is a Snakeskin (Autofocus Books, 2023) and Curing Season: Artifacts (West Virginia University Press, 2022). She directs Split Lip Press.
Danny Caine is the author of the poetry collections Picture Window, Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, and Flavortown, as well as the books How to Resist Amazon and Why and How to Protect Bookstores and Why. He's a co-owner of the Raven Book Store, Publishers Weekly's 2022 bookstore of the year.
Holly Pelesky is the author of the essay collection, Cleave, from Autofocus Books. She also writes fiction and poetry and co-edits Vast Chasm literary magazine.
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton. He publishes Autofocus Books and produces The Lives of Writers. His essay Home Movies will be out from Bunny Presse in Feb 2024.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Lexi Kent-Monning.
Lexi Kent-Monning is the author of the novel, The Burden of Joy, which is out now from Rejection Letters Press. Her writing has been published or is forthcoming in XRAY, Joyland, Tilted House Review, Neutral Spaces, Little Engines, and elsewhere.
An excerpt from The Burden of Joy, titled "The Nurse's Lament", was published previously in Autofocus.
Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of The Lives of Writers. His essay Home Movies will be out from Bunny Presse in Feb 2024.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- working customer service for a tech company
-- previous work doing indie music publicity
-- previous work as an assistant to actresses & celebs
-- growing up near Big Sur and the CA/NY push-pull
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- Lexi's first novel The Burden of Joy
-- fragments turning into a memoir turning into a novel
-- doppelganger characters and therapy as a writing tool
-- specific and vital writing about sex and intoxication
-- admitting hard things to yourself for the writing
-- heartbreak and childhood repercussions
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- hindsight and the epilogue
-- the pull toward personal writing
-- the person you are when you write vs publish the book
-- promoting a first book
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Mike Nagel interviews Parker Young.
Parker Young is the author of the the short story collection Cheap Therapist Says You're Insane (Future Tense Books) . His stories have appeared in X-R-A-Y, HAD, Juked, and elsewhere.
A story from Parker's collection, "On the Toilet," was originally published in Autofocus.
Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex (Autofocus Books, 2022). He lives in Plano, Texas. He also wrote the music for this podcast.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- living in the same building as family
-- maintaining relationships as an adult
-- writing spaces and getting into a creative state
-- the stoics and blaming
-- favorite childhood books
-- being inspired by unexplainable writing
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- not being into screenwriting
-- tension rather than plot
-- Parker's story collection CHEAP THERAPIST SAYS YOU'RE INSANE
-- getting a story started and variations in getting it done
-- writing and revising and collecting stories over a long period of time
-- sequencing a book that can be sequenced many ways
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PART THREE, topics include:
--last minute changes to the book
-- working with small presses in general and Future Tense in particular
-- putting out a first book
-- what to do after a first book
-- Thomas Bernhard
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Joshua James Amberson interviews Russell Brakefield.
Russell Brakefield is the author the poetry book My Modest Blindness, which is out now from us at Autofocus Books. He's also the author of Field Recordings and the forthcoming Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West (Wayne State University Press). His writing has appeared in the Indiana Review, New Orleans Review, The Common, Rattle, and elsewhere.
Joshua James Amberson is the author of Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes (Perfect Day Publishing), How to Forget Almost Everything: A Novel (Korza Books), a series of chapbooks on Two Plum Press, as well as the long-running Basic Paper Airplane zine series. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he runs the Antiquated Future online variety store and record label.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- writing routines
-- making a life of writing
-- wonder and mystery
-- writing as a job or identity
-- Russ's first book Field Recordings
-- the concern of audience in art
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- Russ's new book My Modest Blindness
-- keratoconus, and Russ's experience with it
-- lamenting and celebrating the vanishing
-- the thing we want to write vs the one that needs to be written
-- how the need to write influences style and voice
-- writing in connection with Borges's On Blindness
-- sectioning the poetry book on subject and threading them
-- paper and vision as metaphors
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- Russ's forthcoming book Irregular Heartbeats at the Park West
-- trying to continue writing while promoting two books
-- working on short stories and a novel
-- prose vs poetry writing
-- the addictiveness of narrative
-- music in Russ's life and work
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Episode and show artwork by Amy Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Aaron Burch interviews Austin Ross.
Austin Ross is the author of the novel Gloria Patri and is a senior editor with HarperCollins, where he acquires and develops a wide variety of nonfiction titles. His fiction and essays have been featured in Publishers Weekly, Literary Hub, and elsewhere.
Aaron Burch is the author of the essay collection A Kind of In-Betweenand editor of How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, both from Autofocus Books. He's also the author of several other books, including the novel, Year of the Buffalo. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- promoting a small press novel
-- becoming an editor at Harper Collins
-- the day-to-day of remote editing
-- the Sci-Fi -> literary genre pipeline
-- moving into your own territory as a writer
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- Austin's first novel, Gloria Patri, a thriller about religious extremism/terror
-- writing versions of the book across 20 years
-- the year of really writing the book
-- writing novels vs stories
-- finding the structure of the novel
-- putting experience as a kid in an isolationist home church into the novel
-- researching about militia groups for the novel
-- rotating point of view
-- placing the novel where he didn't/doesn't live
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- influential books and reading while working on the novel
-- finding publication with Malarkey Books
-- having the first book out
-- birds
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews Hilary Leichter.
Hilary Leichter is the author of the novels Terrace House, which came out from Ecco early this fall, and Temporary, which came out, to much acclaim, from Coffee House Press in 2020. Hilary’s writing has appeared in The New Yorker, n+1, The New York Times, Conjunctions, and elsewhere. Her work in Harper’s Magazine won the 2021 National Magazine Award in Fiction.
Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She’s also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- boredom and daydreaming
-- the internal/external nature of writing
-- teaching undergrad at Columbia after doing their MFA
-- screenwriting and starting as a playwright
-- writing her first novel Temporary
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- drafting novels in a month
-- writing her new novel Terrace Story
-- book length and access
-- indicating space in fiction
-- an unspoiled emotional experience
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- space and limited space
-- short stories turning into novels
-- the unintentional and intentional parts of writing
-- loneliness and aloneness
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Tyler Dempsey.
Tyler Dempsey is the author of Newspaper Drumsticks, Time as a Sort of Enemy, Consumption & Other Vices, and Will We All Still See Each Other Afterward. He hosts Another Fucking Writing Podcast.
Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of The Lives of Writers.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- working for the Bureau of Land Management
-- search and rescue volunteer work
-- starting his Another Fucking Writing Podcast
-- the monologue development process for his show
-- influential podcasts for inspiring and evolving Tyler's and Michael's
-- Tyler finding sobriety after living in rural Alaska for many years and wanting to die
-- Michael's own issues around similar but different shit
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- more about Tyler's time in Alaska
-- his brother's arrest and his relationship with him before and after
-- his book of poems from his brother letters, Newspaper Drumsticks
-- the story of his novel Consumption and Other Vices finding publication
-- a propelling voice and dreamlike-ness
-- a new autofiction novel based around his dark time in Alaska
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Kazim Ali.
Kazim Ali is a poet, novelist, and essayist. His most recent book is Sukun: New and Selected Poems, which draws from his six previous full-length collections, and includes 35 new poems. He's also published novels, translations, anthologies, and a memoir. He was a founding editor of Nightboat Books.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
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PART ONE, topics include:
--the Kinkos era of indie publishing
-- looking back at 25 years of work for SUKUN: New & Selected Poems
-- finding the echoes in a body of work
-- the LP as poetic book form
-- also putting out a New & Selected with Harper Collins India
-- revising early poems and Dickenson's alternate wordings
-- the new book within the new book
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- starting out as a reader and writing
-- varying Englishes and language that crosses borders
-- working as an organizer for student organizations
-- the many genres in Kazim's body of work
-- not changing just to achieve a marker of success
-- founding Nightboat Books or small presses in general
-- always working on something creative
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- the beginnings and evolution of Nightboat Books
-- the small press experimental writing landscape then and now
-- spirituality and faith
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Kaycie Hall interviews Heidi Julavits.
Kaycie Hall is the lead editor of our online journal Autofocus. She's also a writer and literary translator, whose work has appeared in Peach Mag, Neutral Spaces, Triangle House Review, and other journals.
Heidi Julavits is the author of the new book Directions to Myself: A Memoir of Four Years, The Folded Clock: A Diary, and four novels, including the PEN Award-winning The Vanishers. She is an associate professor at Columbia University and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York City and Maine.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- psychic boundaries
-- living and writing part of the year in Maine
-- Narnia and Enid Blyton books
-- writing young for the fun of it
-- the life of The Believer
-- writing novels and then writing The Folded Clock (memoir)
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- a book Heidi sold and was supposed to write
-- that book becoming Directions to Myself: A Memoir of Four Years
-- thinking about how to mother a boy / mother blaming
-- treatment of the same behaviors across gender
-- writing about your own children
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- Heidi's book tour on a boat
-- getting into video editing
-- the cutting involved in a current project
-- a dead French actress' estate
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Don't forget to check out Autofocus Books.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Benjamin Niespodziany.
Benjamin Niespodziany is the author of the poetry collection No Farther Than the End of the Street (Okay Donkey Press), the novella in one act plays Cardboard Clouds (X-R-A-Y), and two chapbooks. His work has been featured in Fence, Crazyhorse, Fairy Tale Review, Salt Hill, and other journals. He also runs the record label and blog Neon Pajamas.
Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of this podcast.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- music and music marketing in Chicago
-- his instrumental label Neon Pajamas
-- writing about music in the Sound Cloud era
-- growing up as a listener and a reader
-- a special interest in concept albums
-- moving from journalism to poetry and flash
-- working at a library after time in the Peace Corps
-- starting to write more and publish poetry and flash
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- the novella in one-act-plays Cardboard Clouds
-- language as performance and boxing yourself in
-- influential books for the stage play format
-- a circus-like aesthetic
-- sound being everything
-- his first poetry collection No Farther Than the End of the Street
-- writing autobiographically without writing autobiographically
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PART THREE , topics include:
-- writing from first and second vs third person
-- books as concept albums
-- publishing his books with presses associated with favorite journals
-- accumulating writing after finding obsessions
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Lucas Mann interviews Jill Talbot.
Lucas Mann is the author of three books, Captive Audience: On Love and Reality TV, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in Middle of Everywhere. His fourth book, Attachments: Essays On Fatherhood and Other Performances is forthcoming around the spring of 2024. He is also the new co-owner Riffraff Bookstore and Bar in Providence, RI.
Jill Talbot is the author of The Last Year: Essays. She’s also the author of The Way We Weren’t: A Memoir and Loaded: Women and Addiction, the co-editor of The Art of Friction: Where (Non)Fictions Come Together, and the editor of Metawritings: Toward a Theory of Nonfiction. Her craft book, The Essay Form(s), will be published in 2024.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- the longstanding conversation between Jill and Lucas
-- the old writing table and a new writing table
-- writing and teaching as the same project
-- being the daughter of a football coach and granddaughter of a minister
-- cheerleading as early identity and coming to non-fiction
-- Jill's first book, LOADED
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- the process of writing THE WAY THEY WEREN'T
-- turning the Paris Review Daily column THE LAST YEAR into a book
-- writing from the precipice
-- the challenge of writing about parenthood
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- navigating the intention of writing about a child
-- writing habits changing after her child leaving the house
-- the pandemic happening during the writing of the original column
-- stories that are and aren't yours to tell
-- life after the end of THE LAST YEAR
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Don't forget to check out Autofocus Books.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews John Milas.
John Milas is the author of the gothic horror novel The Militia House, which came out this year from MacMillan. He served on active duty in the Martine Corps and deployed to Afghanistan in 2010.
Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She’s also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- the office ceiling collapsing
-- a job you don't take home
-- writing habits changing
-- the first draft of his novel THE MILITIA HOUSE
-- getting away with watching Alien as a sheltered kid
-- enlisting in the marines
-- a valuable poetry workshop
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- serving as a marine from 2008 - 2012
-- returning to school after the military
-- the parts of deployment that became parts of the novel
-- the haunted house at the center of the novel
-- scaring yourself to scare readers
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- porcupine quills as a motif in the novel
-- unfamiliarity
-- repetition as escalation rather than duplication
-- narrative devices related to writing
-- the question of PTSD in Act 3
-- the style of the narrator vs the writer
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Holly Pelesky interviews Stephanie Austin.
Holly Pelesky is the author of the essay collection, Cleave, from us at Autofocus Books. She also writes fiction and poetry and co-edits Vast Chasm literary magazine.
Stephanie Austin is the author of Something I Might Say, a short essay collection now available from WTAW Press. Her work has been published in more than 25 literary journals in the United States and Canada including The Sun, American Short Fiction, Bending Genres, Wigleaf, Pithead Chapel, and others.
An essay from Stephanie's collection, Kill Floor, was originally published by us at Autofocus.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- assistant property management
-- sending out a novel for 15 years
-- agonizing less over writing CNF
-- the short essay collection SOMETHING I MIGHT SAY
-- a lot of loss in a short period of time
-- health anxiety in general and especially during the pandemic
-- watching a parent's body die
-- caregiving for others and (not) taking care of the self
-- getting (and enjoying) a low-res MFA
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- growing up in a small rural town in Illinois
-- things shattering after a move
-- reading and writing about ghosts and vampires as a kid
-- healing and whether one actually heals
-- the things you've been trying to do for 20 years being possible
-- a rejection that turn into publication for Something I Might Say
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Katharine Coldiron.
Katharine Coldiron is the author of Ceremonials, an SPD bestseller; Plan 9 from Outer Space, a monograph; and Junk Film, a collection of critical essays. Her work as a critic has appeared in the Washington Post, the Times Literary Supplement, the Guardian, the Houston Chronicle, Brevity, the Believer, and many other places; as a hybrid essayist, she has placed work in Conjunctions, the Rupture, the Offing, and elsewhere. She is the reviews editor at Barrelhouse and the managing editor of X-R-A-Y.
Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of this podcast.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- living in the unfashionable part of LA
-- being able to stop full time work
-- writing and watching movies
-- editing reviews at Barrelhouse
-- being able to dish out editing but not being able to take it
-- managing editing at X-R-A-Y
-- cross-stitching
-- Autofocus's How to Write a Novel anthology
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- parapsychology and Ghostbusters
-- an anthology of millennial writing on Poltergeist
-- getting the writing bug and the movie bug
-- Star Wars
-- old Hollywood
-- quitting and coming back to writing
-- the move into hybrid writing
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PART THREE , topics include:
-- the critical essay collection JUNK FILM
-- the problem of (not) defining good and bad
-- the word 'junk'
-- Plan 9 from Outerspace
-- bad film as an ecosystem
-- straight to VHS vs straight DVD movies
-- the role of delusion in artmaking
-- (not) distinguishing good and bad taste
-- trying to resist looking on with pity
-- cinematic grammar (not) translating to writing
-- a novel in progress about Ilsa
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Joshua James Amberson.
Joshua James Amberson is the author of Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes (Perfect Day Publishing), How to Forget Almost Everything: A Novel (Korza Books), a series of chapbooks on Two Plum Press, as well as the long-running Basic Paper Airplane zine series. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he runs the Antiquated Future online variety store and record label.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- an old dog
-- other priorities overtaking writing
-- growing up and living in the Pacific Northwest
-- an influential musical uncle
-- playing musical again after a long break
-- becoming a poetry publisher from 19 - 24
-- playing in bands in Olympia
-- moving to Portland for the writing community
-- the pull to engage in collective concerns and projects
-- recording an audiobook and wanting to edit everything
-- the benefits of working on other projects
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- pseudoxanthoma elasticum (PXE)
-- retinal hemorrhaging and treatment with needles
-- Joshua's new book Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes
-- our ocular-centric culture and taking sight for granted
-- resisting suggestions to turn essay collection into memoir
-- writing the collection as a book from the beginning
-- approaching one subject from many angles
-- upcoming events and new projects
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Mistie Watkins and Amy Watkins interview each other.
Mistie R. Watkins is the author of the prose poetry collection HIRAETH (Autofocus Books, 2023). She lives in Orlando with her kiddo, two dogs, and two rats. You can find her work in Burrow Press Review, The Drunken Odyssey, and Autofocus or follow her on Instagram at mistie_thebogwitch.
Amy Watkins is the author of three poetry chapbooks (Milk & Water, Lucky, and Wolf Daughter), a graduate of the Spalding University MFA in Writing, and a parent of a human girl. She lives in Orlando, Florida.
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Topics include:
-- Mistie's recent book release at Zeppelin Books in Orlando, FL
-- the challenge of blending sincerity and humor in poetry
-- Mistie's new book Hiraeth, which centers on the death of their sister in childhood
-- making sure you're not the only person who doesn't fuck up when writing from life
-- writing that becomes journaling and writing that becomes the "work"
-- differences in composing poems and essays for both writers
-- the chapbook as the ideal poetic form
-- concision in smaller work and larger work
-- learning what to leave out of a poem and a book
-- turning family myths into literature
-- the necessity of writing the I into the family myths
-- the fiction in the facts and the truth in the fiction
-- the presence of Florida in Amy and Mistie's work
-- the specificity of place
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Emily Costa interviews Tucker Leighty-Phillips.
Tucker Leighty-Phillips is the author of Maybe This Is What I Deserve, which won the 2022 Fiction Chapbook Contest from Split/Lip Press and was published this year. His work has appeared in Smokelong, X-R-A-Y, Wigleaf, HAD, Booth, and elsewhere.
Emily Costa is the author of Until It Feels Right (Autofocus Books, 2022). Her work can be found in X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Barrelhouse, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel sort of about her father's video store, as well as a book of short stories.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- working for an Appalachian arts and culture organization
-- getting a puppy just after the flood in Kentucky this summer
-- reading earlier but not writing until later
-- traveling around with bands
-- graduating with a BA at 28 and going into an MFA for the stipend
-- Tucker and Emily getting published early on in similar places
-- preferences of writing short or long
-- fun and play
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- winding down promotion for Tucker's award-winning chapbook
-- writing childhood and kids in fiction
-- grocery stores and critters sneaking into the book
-- the truths in Tucker's fiction
-- reclaiming past shame
-- correlation/causation of writing and healing
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- the media Tucker consumed while writing the stories
-- the worst season of Frasier
-- Columbo and the types of tv shows in your life
-- more about Tucker's work with Appalshop
-- new projects
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Emma Catherine Perry.
Emma Catherine Perry is the author of Blocks World, which is out today from Great Place Books. Her poetry is published in Fence, Nashville Review, Quarterly West, and elsewhere. She currently lives in Moscow, Idaho where she supports other writers in her capacity as Associate Director of the Writing Center and English faculty at the University of Idaho.
A poem from Blocks World, “The Sign of the Self,” appears in Autofocus's Fall 2023 issue.
Michael Wheaton is the publisher of Autofocus Books and producer of this podcast.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- moving on to a new job at a new school
-- moving around a lot
-- linguistic diversity and justice
-- growing up in rural New Hampshire
-- an art history major before MFA and PHD
-- external validation and publishing later
-- the challenging of publishing at all
-- deciding to go into a PHD
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- Emma's debut poetry collection BLOCKS WORLD
-- finding the form and forms of the book
-- making poetry within the confines of the medium
-- collaborating with non-human actors
-- process and seriality
-- longer poems and poems as reckonings
-- writing directly to family members and others
-- the illusion of non-mediation and intimacy
-- blending the specific real and poetic distance
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- pattern and mutation
-- seriality and repetition and iteration
-- aphorism and the declarative statement
-- long lines and syntactical play
-- finding publication as the first book by Great Place Books
-- the humbling amount of amazing unpublished manuscripts out in the world
-- trying and participating as the process
-- the importance of sharing work with friends
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Erin Slaughter interviews Dan O'Brien.
Dan O’Brien is a playwright, poet, and essayist whose books include the poetry collection Our Cancers and the nonfiction work A Story That Happens. His newest poetry collection, A Survivor’s Notebook, is out today from Acre Books. And both his lyrical memoir From Scarsdale: A Childhood and a new collection of plays, True Story: A Trilogy, are out next week from Dalkey Archive Press.
Erin Slaughter is the author of the short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us and the poetry collections The Sorrow Festival, and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Realize That You Are the Sun. She is the managing editor of Autofocus and was formerly the editor/co-founder of literary journal and chapbook press The Hunger. Her writing has appeared in Lit Hub, Electric Literature, CRAFT, The Rumpus, Prairie Schooner, Split Lip Magazine, and elsewhere
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- arriving once again at Sewanee
-- growing up in Scarsdale as a reader & writer
-- formative trauma and OCD
-- finding community in the theater
-- writing recent plays in poetic style
-- being disowned
-- confessional poetry and the impulse to write
-- the benefits of being a multi-genre writer
-- a background in comedy
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- a creative marriage with the actress Jessica St. Clair
-- confession and ethics and deletion
-- growing up in an abusive household
-- Scarsdale as a psychological more than geographical place
-- knowing or not knowing if family is reading your work
-- ironically fulfilling a myth
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- Dan's new poetry book A Survivor's Notebook
-- Dan's previous poetry book Our Cancers
-- loss of language and fragmentation
-- poetry and spiritualism
-- ghosts and the richness of belief
-- turning toward a deeper interest in the here and now
-- telling true stories
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews Emerson Whitney.
Emerson Whitney is the author ofDaddy Boy (McSweeney’s 2023), Heaven (McSweeney’s 2020), and the poetry title, Ghost Box (Timeless Infinite Light, 2014). Emerson’s work has appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books and elsewhere.
Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She’s also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- a deep intentionality around place
-- teaching at Godard College's low-residency program
-- going to undergrad at Godard after six other programs
-- alternative educational paths
-- reporting for the New York Observer
-- writing autobiographically young
-- an otherwise dangerous childhood
-- working with Maggie Nelson at Cal Arts
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- the reader/writer dynamic in direct address
-- best writing as best thinking
-- Emerson's new book Daddy Boy
-- chasing storms that never materialize
-- the mutable self
-- multi-generational disability experiences
-- tornado as book structure
-- weather
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- pain and agency
-- writing about kink
-- suppressing signals
-- the end of storm chasing
-- new work about special ed and disability
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Holly Pelesky interviews Suzanne Ohlmann.
Suzanne Ohlmann is the author of Shadow Migration: Mapping a Life (University of Nebraska Press) and a registered nurse. Her work has been published by the Associated Press, Intima: A Journal of Narrative Medicine, Longreads, and Texas Monthly.
Holly Pelesky is the author of the essay collection, Cleave, from us at Autofocus Books. She also writes fiction and poetry and co-edits Vast Chasm literary magazine.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- walking the neighborhood
-- growing up Lutheran in rural Nebraska
-- Suzanne and Holly's books from different sides of adoption
-- Suzanne's Shadow Migration: Mapping a Life
-- finding families while traveling
-- feeling disconnected from your body
-- metabolizing a missing person in your life
-- growing up with music
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- Suzanne's search for her biological parents
-- vulnerability and creativity
-- life changing after sharing the story
-- trauma and healing
-- inviting the reader to sit down with you
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PART THREE, topics include:
-- Suzanne's path to publishing a very personal book
-- the trouble of self-promoting, particularly for personal writing
-- deep-seated religious programming
-- shame and guilt, particularly around adoption
-- the need for human connection
-- mother wounds and how we define love
-- meeting Kurt Vonnegut
-- writing letters
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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Michael Wheaton interviews Emily Adrian.
Emily Adrian is the author of Everything Here Is Under Control and The Second Season, as well as two critically acclaimed novels for young adults. Her work has appeared in Granta, Joyland, Los Angeles Review of Books, and The Millions. She is also a co-editor of the new press Great Place Books.
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PART ONE, topics include:
-- a summer in the West
-- kids going into first grade
-- the founding of Great Place Books
-- writers getting pushed into commercial directions
-- the number of great unpublished manuscripts out there
-- the first few forthcoming books for the press
-- GPB's educational arm and Emily's class on Alice Munro
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PART TWO, topics include:
-- writing without ambition as a kid
-- dropping out of high school
-- writing novels after college
-- writing young characters while a young person
-- writing mothers while a mother
-- how different and idiosyncratic people's lives are
-- Emily's most recent novel The Second Season
-- the relief of not thinking about a book anymore
-- imagining a future phase of life through story
-- basing her main character on NBA analyst Doris Burke
-- researching the novel & talking to lots of people
-- becoming a genuine fan of the NBA
___________
PART THREE, topics include:
-- writing in third vs. first person
-- the beauty of clarity and context in a story
-- knowing why you reveal what you reveal and don't reveal
-- the urgency of structuring the novel around the NBA finals
-- a novel in progress
-- writing and publishing stories
-- a memoir that did not get published
-- Alice Munro and time
____________
Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Aaron Burch interviews Andrew Porter.
Andrew Porter is the author of the novel In Between Days and two short story collections, The Theory of Light and Matter and, most recently, The Disappeared. Porter’s short stories have appeared in One Story, Ploughshares, The Threepenny Review, The Missouri Review, and Prairie Schooner, among others.
Aaron Burch is the author of the essay collection A Kind of In-Betweenand editor of How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing, both from Autofocus Books. He's also the author of several other books, including the novel, Year of the Buffalo. He is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD.
____________
PART ONE, topics include:
-- finishing up summer
-- writing longhand
-- teaching intro to creative writing
-- discovering writing as an undergrad
-- relationships with rejection
-- early jobs and time in an MFA
-- Twitter as a kind of MFA
-- the decision to teach
____________
PART TWO, topics include:
-- Andrew's new story collection, THE DISAPPEARED
-- guilt about not writing much during early fatherhood
-- writing the first story in the collection
-- spinning a classic story in a new direction
-- nostalgia as life and writing theme
-- the line of sentimentality
-- stories as self-contained moments in time
____________
PART THREE, topics include:
-- short story gut punch moments
-- knowing when a long story isn't a novel
-- mixing the longer and short forms in a collection
-- story collection order as album order
-- quiet-loud-quiet
-- work on a next novel
____________
Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews Christine Sneed.
Christine Sneed is the author of the new story collection Direct Sunlightin addition to three novels and two previous story collections, most recently Please Be Advised and The Virginity of Famous Men. She is also the editor of a collection of short fiction, Love in the Time of Time's Up.
Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She’s also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.
____________
PART ONE, topics include:
-- juggling teaching gigs
-- the fate of mid-list fiction writers
-- writing stories vs novels
-- novels in drawers
-- Christine's Substack, Bookish
-- mainstream publishing
-- sticking it out
-- poetry before fiction
____________
PART TWO, topics include:
-- life before the first book
-- 25 years of rejection from one mag
-- disappointment
-- Christine's new story collection Direct Sunlight
-- stories as windows
-- beginning with a title
-- layering details
-- the comic potential of the every day
-- collecting a story collection
-- the truth, revealed
_________
PART THREE, topics include:
-- balancing formal inventiveness
-- associative logic
-- the enmeshment of character and plot
-- the stories of Alice Munro
-- the first couple lines
-- figuring it out as you go
-- dealing with disappointment
-- tuning out the outside world
-- new work
____________
Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Holly Pelesky interviews Allegra Goodman.
Allegra Goodman is the author of two stories collections and many novels, including Intuition, The Cookbook Collector, The Chalk Artist, and most recently SAM. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere, and she’s been a finalist for the National Book Award.
Holly Pelesky is the author of the essay collection, Cleave, from us at Autofocus Books. She also writes fiction and poetry and co-edits Vast Chasm literary magazine.
____________
PART ONE, topics include:
-- a recently empty nest
-- writing routines
-- holding the thread
-- growing up in Honolulu
-- the seven-year-old novelist
-- a literary family
-- Little House in the Big Woods
-- writing short stories at Harvard in the 80's
-- a story as a ship in a bottle
-- living with a novel
-- words as tools vs words as jewels
-- writing as performance with a delay between the audience
-- Allegra's new coming-of-age novel SAM
-- evolving consciousness as plot
____________
PART TWO, topics include:
-- process changing over time as a writer
-- studying Shakespeare and writing the Markowitz stories
-- throwing away hundreds of pages
-- versatility
-- writing about interests in different keys
-- multimedia research
-- imaginative research
-- startling humor
-- Tolstoy
-- new reading recommendations
-- laws, rituals, and rules
-- observing the Sabbath
____________
PART THREE, topics include:
-- writing things when ready to write them
-- courage
-- working through uncertainty
-- the hugeness of coming-of-age
-- the prospect of being a moon lady
-- self-deception
-- not pushing
-- forthcoming books
____________
Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Brandon Shimoda.
Brandon Shimoda is a yonsei poet/writer, and the author of eight books of poetry and prose, including Portuguese, The Desert, The Grave on the Wall, and most recently Hydra Medusa, which is out now from Nightboat Books. He is also the curator of the Hiroshima Library, an itinerant reading room/collection of books on the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He teaches at Colorado College.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collectionFur Not Light. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.
Part One, topics include:
-- parenting small children
-- sibling relationships
-- growing up with a frustrated artist
-- living on the moon
-- writing while in motion
-- the bus as residency
Part Two, topics include:
-- working five jobs in pandemic lockdown
-- negative optimism
-- more leading to more
-- Brandon's new book Hydra Medusa
-- travel-mania and/or material-seeking
-- the MFA -> publish three books -> visiting professor -> tenure track pipeline
-- messiness and non-messiness
-- Brandon's previous book The Desert
-- corresponding with other writers
-- Brandon's blurb stance
Part Three, topics include:
-- more about Hydra Medusa
-- writing about dreams
-- orderly language
-- feeling like a piece of hardware
-- waking up in the morning
-- the writing coming before the book
-- the book coming before the writing
-- writing poetry and/or prose
-- the forthcoming A Book on the Afterlife of Japanese-American Incarceration
-- putting a rectangle around a river
-- editing an anthology as creative act
Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex. Here's more of his project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.
The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.
Michael talks with Aaron Burch about longhand, episode 10 of this podcast, Aaron’s help getting Autofocus and The Lives of Writers noticed, HAD/WAS, Short Story Long, slowing down, A Kind of In-Between, sounding like yourself, constraint, the How to Write a Novel anthology, teaching writing by thinking about other crafts, how books might come together, and more.
Aaron Burch is the author of A Kind of In-Between, The Year of the Buffalo, How to Write a Novel: An Anthology of 20 Craft Essays About Writing, None of Which Ever Mention Writing,and several other books. He started the literary journal Hobart, which he edited for twenty years, and is currently the editor of Short Story, Long and the co-editor of WAS (Words & Sports) and HAD. He lives in Ann Arbor, MI and is online: on Twitter and Instagram at @aaron__burch, and the world wide web at aaronburch.net
You can buy A Kind of In-Between and the How to Write a Novel anthology bundled here.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Emily Costa talks with Shannon McLeod about writing (or not) over summer break, watching kids learn to read, pushing against and accepting your tendencies, NATURE TRAIL STORIES (Thirty West, 2023), "borecore," walking (and noticing), birds, loneliness, writing short vs. long, reality TV, writing communities, and more.
Shannon McLeod is the author of the collection Nature Trail Stories (Thirty West, 2023), the novella Whimsy (Long Day Press, 2021) and the essay chapbook Pathetic (University of Indianapolis Etchings Press). Her writing has appeared in Tin House Online, Wigleaf, Hobart, Joyland Magazine, Cosmonauts Avenue, and Prairie Schooner, among other publications.
Emily Costa is the author of Until It Feels Right (Autofocus Books, 2022). Her work can be found in X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Barrelhouse, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel sort of about her father's video store, as well as a book of short stories.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Sara Lippmann talks with Seth Rogoff about collaboration, a triangle of place (Berlin, Prague, Maine), a relationship with seminal texts, the old testament, THE KIRSCHBAUM LECTURES (Sagging Meniscus, 2023), decentering meaning, making choices for or against expectation, handwriting (and not outlining), working with former NBA player Kendrick Perkins, and more.
Seth Rogoff is the author of the novels First, the Raven: a Preface (2017), Thin Rising Vapors (2018), and The Kirschbaum Lectures (2023), and the nonfiction book The Politics of the Dreamscape (2021). He is the co-author with former NBA player Kendrick Perkins of the memoir The Education of Kendrick Perkins (2023). Find more at sethrogoff.com.
Sara Lippman is the author of the novel Lech (Tortoise Books) and the story collections Doll Palace (re-released by 7.13 Books) and Jerks (Mason Jar Press). Her fiction has been honored by the New York Foundation for the Arts, and her essays have appeared in The Millions, The Washington Post, Catapult, The Lit Hub and elsewhere. With Seth Rogoff, she is co-editing the anthology Smashing the Tablets: Radical Retellings of the Hebrew Bible for SUNY Press.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik and Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Erin Slaughter talks with Emma Bolden about leaving academia, editing for Screen Door Review, asexuality, southern influence, writing across genres and modes, her memoir THE TIGER AND THE CAGE (Soft Skull Press, 2022), fractal form, writing about other people, writing about embodied trauma, confessional literature, endometriosis, and more.
Emma Bolden is the author of The Tiger and the Cage: A Memoir of a Body in Crisis, House Is an Enigma, medi(t)ations, and Maleficae. The recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Literary Fellowship, her work has appeared in The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Best American Poetry, The Best Small Fictions, and journals including Mississippi Review, Seneca Review, StoryQuarterly, Prairie Schooner, TriQuarterly, and Shenandoah.
Erin Slaughter is the author of A Manual for How to Love Us, The Sorrow Festival, and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Realize That You Are the Sun. She is the managing editor of Autofocus.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Lena Crown talks with Jessica E. Johnson about miner parents, trees, biology and literature, meaning making, mechanism, metaphor, her new book METABOLICS, the book-length poem form, accumulation, research as authority, place and context, writing the body, troubling the notion of a self, figures and diagrams, and more.
Jessica E. Johnson writes poetry and nonfiction. She's the author of the book-length poem Metabolics and the chapbook In Absolutes We Seek Each Other. Her poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Paris Review, Tin House, The New Republic, Poetry Northwest, River Teeth, DIAGRAM, Annulet Poetics, The Southeast Review, and Sixth Finch.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Sara Rauch talks with Katherine Indermaur about life changing with a ten-month-old, poetry and sound, editing for Sugar House Review, poetry on the page, her book I|I, the page as mirror, the sheffer stroke, the mirror in history, the mirror in her life, implicating the reader, going from chapbook to full-length, the ways we talk about ourselves, and more.
Katherine Indermaur’s first full-length book, I|I (Seneca Review Books, 2022), was selected as the winner of the 2022 Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Book Prize by Kazim Ali and as the winner of the 2023 Colorado Book Award. Katherine is also the author of two chapbooks, Facing the Mirror: An Essay (Coast|noCoast, 2020) and Pulse (Ghost City Press, 2018).
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Jeff Alessandrelli talks with Nazli Koca about growing up in Turkey, finding a writing community in Berlin, developing a life through writing, coming to the US for an MFA, writing her debut novel THE APPLICANT (Grove Atlantic, 2023), using the diary form, fictionalizing the autobiographical, the novel's release at the time of the earthquake in Turkey, and more.
Nazli Koca is the author of the novel The Applicant (Grove Atlantic, 2023). She is the recipient of grants from the Nanovic Institute, Soham Dance Space, and United States Artists. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Threepenny Review, BookForum, Second Factory, The Chicago Review of Books, and books without covers, among other outlets.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Jeff Alessandrelli talks with Eileen Myles about living between New York and Marfa, poetry as daily (and not daily) practice, sobriety, vernacular writing, putting together a new and selected, their new poetry collection A WORKING LIFE, aesthetic criticism, touring, Bobby Vee, translators, coffee, and more.
Eileen Myles' books include Pathetic Literature, For Now (an essay/talk about writing), Evolution, Afterglow (a dog memoir), I Must Be Living Twice: new and selected poems, Chelsea Girls, and most recently A Working Life. The Trip, their super-8 puppet road film, can be seen on YouTube. Eileen has received a Guggenheim Fellowship and was recently elected a member of the American Academy of Arts & Letters. They live in New York and Marfa, TX.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the director/co-editor of Fonograf Editions and BUNNY. fonografeditions.com
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Tyler Gillespie about finishing a dissertation, living again and building community in Florida, growing up queer in a Southern Baptist community and becoming a reader and writer, holding onto faith outside of that context, getting sober, concurrent interests in poetry and journalism, his new poetry collection the nature machine!, working on a comedy EP during lockdown, his relationship (and podcast) with his grandmother, Britney Spears and celebrities as metaphor, incorporating multimedia into the new book in harmony with form and content, blending smart with funny with thoughtful with playful with emotional in a poem, surprise, and more.
Tyler Gillespie is the author of the nature machine! (Autofocus Books, 2023), The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University Press of Florida, 2021), and Florida Man: Poems (Red Flag Poetry, 2018). He's a fifth-generation Floridian and currently teaches at Ringling College of Art + Design. Find out more at TylerGillespie.com.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Jeff Alessandrelli talks with Arda Collins about feeling freer about writing after having kids, becoming a poet, hiding her prose, Charles Simic, working on documentaries, the Iowa workshop, her first collection IT IS DAYLIGHT (2009), her new collection STAR LAKE (2022), the years between the books, the links between the books, and more.
Arda Collins is the author of Star Lake (2002) and It Is Daylight (2009), which was awarded the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, A Public Space, Colorado Review, jubilat, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Sarton Award in Poetry from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the director and co-editor of Fonograf Editions and its imprint, BUNNY.
Find Autofocus Books at autofocuslit.com/books.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Mike Nagel talks with D.T. Robbins about boredom, imagination, death, the new story collection BIRDS AREN'T REAL (Maudlin House), endings, beginnings, process, knowing and not know what you're doing, and more.
D.T. Robbins is the author of Birds Aren't Real, out now from Maudlin House, and This Is What Happens When You Leave Me Alone, from Rejection Letters Press, which he founded. He lives and works in Southern California with his family.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission form Bertholet.
Michael talks with John Cotter about a pending move, the influence of monologues and Spalding Gray, theater and recitation, early adventures in poetry, life and writing through his first novel, the gravity of Ménière's disease on his life thereafter, his new memoir LOSING MUSIC, honestly approaching the question of suicide, multi-faceted memoirs, memory/scene work, and life now.
John Cotter is the author of the memoir Losing Music, published by Milkweeds Editions, portions of which have appeared in Raritan, Catapult, Indiana Review, and Guernica. His novel, Under the Small Lights, was published by Miami University Press in 2010, and his fiction, essays, criticism, and theater pieces have appeared–or will soon– in New England Review, Epoch, Electric Literature’s Recommended Reading, Georgia Review, Adroit, The New York Times, andCommonweal.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Jeff Alessandrelli about the nonprofit book press/record label Fonograf Editions, feeling like more of a reader than a writer, supporting the work of other writers, his poetry collection FUR NOT LIGHT, the non-autobiographical "I," his novel or fictional essay or literary collage AND YET, writing about sex, desire, and the fluid self, the process of collaging in the work of other writers, and more.
Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of six books, most recently the poetry collection Fur Not Light and the novel And Yet. His poetry and prose have been published in places like The American Poetry Review, Gulf Coast, and Prairie Schooner, and his reviews and interviews in The Rumpus, Kenyon Review, Rain Taxi, and more. He directs the nonprofit book press/record label Fonograf Editions.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
fonografeditions.com
autofocuslit.com/books
Michael talks with Hilary Plum about small presses, the recent news around Catapult and Elizabeth Koch, her first three books, her essay collection HOLE STUDIES, editing, writing about illness, pop culture as entrance into larger ideas, form as content, form as container, returning to poetry after four prose books, and more.
Hilary Plum (she/her) is the author of several books, including the forthcoming poetry collection Excisions (Black Lawrence Press, 2023), the essay collection Hole Studies (Fonograf Editions, 2022), and the novel Strawberry Fields (Fence, 2018), winner of the Fence Modern Prize in Prose. She teaches at Cleveland State University and in the NEOMFA program, and she serves as associate director of the CSU Poetry Center. With Zach Savich she edits the Open Prose Series at Rescue Press. Recent work has appeared in Astra, The Rupture, Granta, American Poetry Review, Cleveland Review of Books, College Literature, and elsewhere.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Get Hole Studies (Fonograf Editions, 2022) here.
Check out the catalog at Autofocus Books here.
Michael talks with Chelsea Hodson about moving to Sedona, the Morning Writing Club, her new imprint Rose Books, the influence of Giancarlo DiTrapano and Tyrant Books, creative risk, life and writing in New York while working on her first essay collection TONIGHT I'M SOMEONE ELSE, the story of her chapbook PITY THE ANIMAL, the pull toward writing intimate work artfully, ambiguity, a novel in progress, and more.
Chelsea Hodson is the author of the book of essaysTonight I'm Someone Else and the chapbook Pity the Animal. She is the publisher and editor of Rose Books, and she founded the Morning Writing Club. She has taught at Bennington College and she co-founded the Mors Tua Vita Mea workshop in Sezze Romano, Italy. She has been awarded fellowships from MacDowell Colony and PEN Center USA. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Frieze Magazine, Hazlitt, i-D, and elsewhere. She lives in Sedona, Arizona.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Matthew E. Henry about teaching high school, becoming drawn to the immediacy of poetry, advanced degrees in poetry and theology and education, a chapbook leading to his first full-length poetry collection, teaching and learning in mostly white educational spaces, a book as a prompt for recurring forms to access content, writing in conversation with the work of Langston Hughes, narrative arc and lyric depth in poetry, sarcasm as a poetic tool, and more.
Matthew E. Henry is the author of the Colored page (Sundress Publication, 2022), Teaching While Black (Main Street Rag, 2020), and Dust & Ashes (Californios Press, 2020). He has two collections forthcoming in 2023 from New York Quarterly Books and Harbor Editions. MEH is editor-in-chief of The Weight Journal and an associate poetry editor at Pidgeonholes.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Danny Caine about living in two places at once, the story of the Raven Book Store, making a life as a bookseller, his book HOW TO RESIST AMAZON AND WHY, becoming a poet by accident, writing about corporate and commercial landscapes, his trilogy of previous poetry collections, his new collection PICTURE WINDOW (Autofocus Books), getting more personal about domestic life, the notes for a poem as poem, poetry as life lens, titles as prompts, writing groups, and more.
Danny Caine is the author of the new poetry collection, Picture Window (Autofocus Books, 2023). He's also the author of the poetry collections Continental Breakfast, El Dorado Freddy's, and Flavortown, as well as the book How to Resist Amazon and Why. The Midwest Independent Booksellers Association awarded him the 2019 Midwest Bookseller of the Year award. He's a co-owner of the Raven Book Store, Publishers Weekly's 2022 bookstore of the year.
You can buy a copy of Picture Window from Autofocus Bookshere.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik and Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Kevin Maloney about getting married to the same person a few times, working as a web developer for about fifteen years, looking to dead writers for a way to live, interest in Eastern philosophy and the doomed quest to jump to wisdom, writing with a true voice and sense of humor, THE RED-HEADED PILGRIM (Two Dollar Radio), learning from plotless work to write a book with a plot, the comic giving way to sadness, writing a really good middle, blending the autobiographical and the fictional, seeking the maybe impossible path to spiritual being, and more.
Kevin Maloney is the author of The Red-Headed Pilgrim (Two Dollar Radio, Jan 2023), Horse Girl Fever (CLASH Books, 2024), and Cult of Loretta (Lazy Fascist, 2015).
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik and Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Amy Fusselman about releasing a book, harboring a secret in childhood that created a belief in writing, becoming comfortable sharing personal work, the story of Ohio Edit and other publishing projects, accidental humor in her first four books on challenging topics, writing humor on purpose and trying stand-up, her first novel THE MEANS, the personal seeds of fictional invention, making bold moves on the page without apology, call backs and threading, lists, and much more.
Amy Fusselman is the author of five books. Her latest, The Means, is her first novel. Her previous four books, all nonfiction, have been translated into several languages. Her articles and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and many other places. She lives in New York City with her family and teaches creative writing at NYU.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Chelsea Martin about putting together books as a kid, going to art school, becoming a writer in the small press community, essay as therapy, her essay collection CACA DOLCE, her novel TELL ME I’M AN ARTIST, the line between personal and familial responsibility, the guilt of doing what you want, trying to see yourself in others, defining yourself against others, raising kids in a way you may not be able to relate to, the use of artifacts in the novel, comic sensibility, and more.
Chelsea Martin is the author of the novel Tell Me I’m An Artist (Soft Skull Press, 2022), the essay collection Caca Dolce (Soft Skull Press, 2017), and several other books, including the novella Mickey (Curbside Splendor, 2016). She lives in Spokane, WA with her husband and child.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Nuar Alsadir about remote psychoanalysis, finding a path as a thinker and writer, her two collections of poetry, her book-length essay Animal Joy (Graywolf Press), spontaneous outbursts of laughter, losing an early version of the book, free association as form and process, balancing the personal and intellectual, the research and writing processes, laughter as manipulation, the parallels of laughter and empathy, free range writing play, and more.
Nuar Alsadir is the author of Animal Joy: A Book of Laughter and Resuscitation (Graywolf Press) and the poetry collections Fourth Person Singular (Pavilion Poetry), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry, and More Shadow than Bird (Salt Publishing). She lives in New York City and works as a psychoanalyst.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Erin Langner about working in museums, getting into art and writing and museology, her essay collection Souvenirs from Paradise (Zone 3 Press), the space between reality and fantasy, tourist cities, historical cities as myth, Vegas as a mirror for the self, internal experience of artifice and spectacle, attempting to touch the real, memorializing tragedy, mapping the structure of the book, personal essay as museum, and more.
Erin Langner is the author of the debut essay collection Souvenirs from Paradise, which is out now from Zone 3 Press. She is a regular contributor to Hyperallergic and METROPOLISmagazines, and her writing has also appeared or is forthcoming in publications including Fourth Genre, december, The Offing, and The Normal School. She works on exhibitions and publications at the Frye Art Museum in Seattle.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Adrienne Marie Barrios about working from home, becoming a writer and editor, starting Reservoir Road Literary Magazine and CLOVES Literary, getting diagnosed with autism later in life, Leigh Chadwick, the making of TOO MUCH TONGUE (Autofocus Books, 2022), collaborating in a digital space, existential anxiety with levity, her forthcoming WE DON'T KNOW THAT THIS IS TEMPORARY (Redacted Books, 2023), fears around publishing very personal writing, and more.
Adrienne Marie Barrios is author of the prose poetry collection Too Much Tongue(Autofocus, 2022), written collaboratively with the poet Leigh Chadwick, and her debut poetry collection We Don't Know That This Is Temporary (Redacted Books, 2023). She serves as co-editor-in-chief of Reservoir Road Literary Reviewand editor-in-chief of CLOVES Literary.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik and Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Sarah Fawn Montgomery about blue collar roots, a teacher who fostered a passion for literature, writing poetry while procrastinating, previous books including QUITE MAD: An American Pharma Memoir, her new essay collection HALFWAY FROM HOME, losing her father while finishing the book, connecting the personal to the conceptual, collection organization as Tetris, writing effective entry points to brief sections of writing, efficiently capturing specificity, a novel on submission, and more.
Sarah Fawn Montgomery is the author of Halfway from Home (Split/Lip Press). She is also the author of Quite Mad: An American Pharma Memoir (OSU Press) and the poetry chapbooks Regenerate: Poems of Mad Women (Dancing Girl Press), Leaving Tracks: A Prairie Guide ( 2017), and The Astronaut Checks His Watch ( 2014). Her poetry and prose have appeared in Brevity, Crab Orchard Review, DIAGRAM, Electric Literature, LitHub, New England Review, The Normal School, Passages North, Poetry Foundation, The Rumpus, Southeast Review, Terrain, and numerous other journals and anthologies.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Andrew Bomback about writing on the morning train, life as an academic doctor, his path to reading and writing literature, specializing in kidneys, the influence of David Shields and Amy Fusselman, his Object Lessons book Doctor, the artifice of medicine, his new book Long Days, Short Years, struggles with three-year-olds and anger, the role of rehearsal in parenting, communicating with kids about our failures, and much more.
Andrew Bomback is the author of Long Days, Short Years: A Cultural History of Modern Parenting (MIT Press, 2022). He's also the author of Doctor (Bloomsbury Academic, 2018). An Associate Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center,his essays have appeared in the Atlantic, Los Angeles Review of Books, McSweeney's, and elsewhere.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Sara Rauch talks with Kristine Langley Mahler about space-out time, her work with Split/Lip Press, discovering creative non-fiction, finding a writing community online, submitting to lit mags, her essay collection CURING SEASON, formal experimentation and structure as processing elements, immersion and vulnerability, adolescence, and more.
Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of the debut essay collection Curing Season: Artifacts(WVU Press, 2022). She directs Split/Lip Press. Her next book, A Calendar is a Snakeskin, will be out with us here at Autofocus sometime next year.
Sara Rauch is the author of XO (Autofocus Books, 2022) and What Shines from It: Stories (Alt Current, 2020). sararauch.com
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Ryan Rivas about the story of Burrow Press, finding his way as a writer, the Orlando literary community, the making of the mixed media book NEXTDOOR IN COLONIALTOWN (Autofocus Books, 2022), neighborhood photography, Colonialtown, the suburban gothic, selecting and arranging found text from nextdoor[dot]com, whiteness, the book as art object, and more.
Ryan Rivas is the author of Nextdoor in Colonialtown (Autofocus 2022). He is the Publisher of Burrow Press, and the Coordinator of MFA Publishing at Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas creative writing program. A Macondo Writers Workshop fellow, his work has appeared in The Believer, The Rumpus, Literary Hub, Best American Nonrequired Reading 2012, and elsewhere.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause"
Michael talks with Ashley Farmer about getting into the arts and writing, previous books in fiction and poetry, her essay collection DEAR DAMAGE, a life changing act in the family involving a gun after a severe accident, the inclusion of found forms and conversational transcripts in the collection, compassion, restrained vs. lyrical prose, feedback from family on writing that's about them, factual vs. felt truth, and more.
Ashley Farmer is the author of the essay collection Dear Damage (Sarabande Books, 2022), the story collection Beside Myself (reissued by Apocalypse Party Press, 2022), and the poetry collection The Women (CCM, 2016). Her work has been published in places like Gay Magazine, TriQuarterly, The Progressive, Santa Monica Review, Buzzfeed, Flaunt, Nerve, Potomac Review, Gigantic, Salt Hill Journal, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Jody Keisner about coming to creative non-fiction from academic writing, her collection UNDER MY BED AND OTHER ESSAYS, writing and researching about personal fears and anxieties, adoption, writing as a false sense of control, writing about family and loved ones, chronic illness, and much more.
Jody Keisner is the author of Under My Bed and Other Essays, which is out now from University of Nebraska Press. Her essays have appeared or are forthcoming in Los Angeles Review of Books, Fourth Genre, Brevity, The Rumpus, The Normal School, Essay Daily, and many more. She is the Editor-in-Chief of The Linden Review.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Elisa Gabbert about writing time, her poetry column for NYT, reading and writing about classics, an ongoing interest in language and thinking, life before her first book, tricking yourself into finding a voice or style or mode, her previous books, her new poetry collection NORMAL DISTANCE, mixing the abstract and the concrete, creating poems from previous notes and tweets, writing essay vs. writing poetry, lineating a poem (or not), making containers and forms, and more.
Elisa Gabbert is the author of six books of poetry, essays, and criticism, including The Self Unstable, The Unreality of Memory, and most recently, the poetry collection Normal Distance, which is out today from Soft Skull Press. She writes the On Poetry column for the New York Times, and her work has appeared in Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Believer, and many other venues.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Ander Monson about his many literary projects, a love of machines, integrating the web into early books, image/text, his path to nonfiction, the process of writing PREDATOR: A MEMOIR (Graywolf Press), the cultural importance of the movie, implicating himself in his exploration of contemporary masculinity, returning to the things you love at 14, controlled writing that captures spontaneity, and more.
Ander Monson is the author of nine books, including Predator: A Memoir, A Movie, an Obsession, which is out today from Graywolf Press. He is the hand behind many projects in the literary community, including DIAGRAM, New Michigan Press, Essay Daily, and March Xness, and he directs the MFA program at the University of Arizona.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Jackson Bliss about language as consolation, time in the Peace Corps, writing three books in different genres about mixed-race identity, the choose-your-own-adventure memoir DREAM POP ORIGAMI, crafting his blended style of writing, writing the choices after each piece in the book, the influence of video games and music, the self as text, numbering, and more.
Jackson Bliss is a mixed-race/hapa author of three books, all published in the past year: the story collection COUNTERFACTUAL LOVE STORIES & OTHERE EXPERIMENTS (Noemi Press), the novel AMNESIA OF JUNE BUGS (7.13 Books), and and the memoir DREAM POP ORIGAMI (Unsolicited Press). His stories & essays have appeared in publications like The New York Times, Tin House, Ploughshares, Columbia Journal, Guernica, Longreads, and more.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Janelle Cordero about painting, the library, poetry with a sense of return, her newest collection IMPOSSIBLE YEARS, a poem working or not, poetry as portraiture, fear of death, the natural world, clarity and conversation, genre confusion, and more.
Janelle Cordero is the author of four books of poetry: Two Cups of Tomatoes (2015), Woke to Birds (2019), Many Types of Wildflowers (2020), and Impossible Years (2022), the latter three all from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press. She’s an interdisciplinary artist and educator who lives in Spokane, WA.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Holly Pelesky about reading aloud, becoming honest, co-founding Vast Chasm, editing other writers, writing direct address, the making of CLEAVE, slim volumes, revision as self examination, taking the personal risk of being honest in your art, her fundamental upbringing, the anxiety of promoting a book about yourself, and more.
Holly Pelesky is the author of the fourth Autofocus book, CLEAVE, which is out today so go ahead and check that out. She’s also the author of the poetry chapbook, QUIVER, from Picture Show Press in 2019, an MFA recipient from the University of Nebraska, and a co-founder of the literary magazine Vast Chasm. She lives in Omaha.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Meg Tuite about growing up in a family of readers, A Confederacy of Dunces, the beginnings of writing and publishing, early books, risk, sentences as worlds unto themselves, her newest book WHITE VAN, focusing on dark or uncomfortable material, the effect of suicide on her family, language that works on multiple levels, new work, and more.
Meg Tuite is author of many books of varying forms, including a novel-in-stories, Domestic Apparition (San Francisco Bay Press), a short story collection, Bound By Blue, (Sententia Books) Meet My Haze (Big Table Publishing), and most recently White Van (Unlikely Books). Her work has been published in over 600 literary magazines and over fifteen anthologies. She teaches workshops for Bending Genres, where she is also an editor.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Ryan Skaryd talks with Laurie Uttich about running workshops in a maximum-security correctional center for men, reaching for a pen to figure stuff out, loving teaching after not wanting to teach, moving from fiction to non-fiction, the path to her first book of poems, how an idea might lead to non-fiction or poetry, process, a poem landing or not, the point of writing, not rushing into publication as a student, trying different things, and more.
Laurie Rachkus Uttich is the author of the poetry collection, Somewhere, a Woman Lowers the Hem of Her Skirt (Riot in Your Throat, 2022). Laurie’s prose and poetry have been published in Autofocus; Burrow Press; Brevity; Creative Nonfiction; Fourth Genre; Iron Horse Literary Review; JuxtaProse; The Missouri Review: Poem of the Week; Poets and Writers; Rattle; River Teeth; Ruminate; Split Lip Magazine; The Sun; Superstition Review; Sweet: A Literary Confection; Terrain.org; and others. Laurie teaches at the University of Central Florida.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Kevin Sampsell about his work at Powell's, the story of Future Tense Books, getting into books at 21, stumbling on a memoir, getting into collage after publishing a novel, I MADE AN ACCIDENT (Clash Books, 2022), the mysterious allure of magazines older than you are, the influence of collage on his poetry, losing a book written off the cloud, and more.
Kevin Sampsell is the author of several books, including the memoir A Common Pornography(Harper Perenniel), the novel This Is Between Us(Tin House Books), and most recently the visual collage and poetry collection I Made an Accident(CLASH Books). He coordinates events and the small press rack at Powell’s Books and is the publisher of Future Tense Books.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Siân Griffiths about her horse (Larry), riding, coming of age as a writer in denial, finishing a novel and grad school as a new mother, starting her essay collection THE SUM OF HER PARTS around 2016, writing layered analysis, the process of structuring longer essays, sharing work with her filmmaker sister, writing across genres, trusting your obsessions, and more.
Siân Griffiths the author of four books: the novels Borrowed Horses and Scrapple,the story collection The Heart Keeps Faulty Time, and most recently the essay collection The Sum of Her Parts.She teaches creative writing at Weber State University in Ogden, Utah and serves on the editorial teams for Barrelhouse and American Short Fiction.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Keely Shinners about Cape Town, writing about the arts, their path to becoming a novelist, How to Build a Home for the End of the World (Perennial Press), world building, autobiography in the first novel, a question as a through line, theme as guide for structure, and more.
Keely Shinners is the editor of ArtThrob and the author of How to Build a Home for the End of the World. Their essays have appeared in Electric Literature, Flypaper Lit, Mail & Guardian, Mask Magazine& Full Stop, their fiction has been featured in The Sunand Peach Magazine, and they live and work in Cape Town.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet’s “Special Sause” used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Robert Vaughan about the creation of Bending Genres, reading and writing with dyslexia, almost becoming a musician, finding book publishers from public readings, his sixth book ASKEW, creating distance, form, and technique in revision, telling it slant, upcoming work, and more.
Robert Vaughan is the author of six books of poetry, fiction, and cross-genre writing, including Addicts & Basements, RIFT (a collaboration with Kathy Fish), Funhouse, and most recently Askew (Cowboy Jamboree Press, 2022). He's the editor-in-chief for the literary magazine Bending Genres.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks to Marisa Siegel about her time as owner/eic of The Rumpus, poetry as a thread through her life, writing and editing FIXED STARS (Burrow Press, 2022), writing the personal in poetry vs essay, writing about the writing, approaching prose vs poetry, and new work.
Marisa Siegal is the author of the poetry book Fixed Stars (Burrow Press, 2022). She’s the senior acquiring editor for trade at Northwestern University Press and an editor-at-large for The Rumpus.Her poems have recently appeared or are soon forthcoming in Voicemail Poems, Hobart, Sweet: A Literary Confection, and Autofocus, and her essay “Inherited Anger” appears in the anthology Burn It Down(Seal Press, 2019).
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Emily Costa about the making of UNTIL IT FEELS RIGHT, turning a diary into a book, OCD, performing in therapy, intensive CBT, reasons to make the private public, timeliness, a novel-in-progress, early influences, and more.
Emily Costa is the author of Until It Feels Right (Autofocus Books). Her work can be found in X-R-A-Y, Hobart, Barrelhouse, Wigleaf, and elsewhere. She is currently working on a novel sort of about her father's video store, as well as a book of short stories. You can follow her on Twitter @emilylauracosta.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Jennifer Wortman about reading as a disaffected teen, becoming a fiction writer, her story collection THIS. THIS. THIS. IS. LOVE. LOVE. LOVE., self-conscious narrators, theme appearing without seeing it, the question of God, a novel-in-stories-in-progress, where strangeness in a story comes from, and more.
Jennifer Wortman is the author of the story collection This. This. This. Is. Love. Love. Love.(Split/Lip Press, 2019). She’s been a recipient of NEA and MacDowell fellowships, and her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Glimmer Train, Electric Literature, Brevity, Best Small Fictions, Best Microfiction, and elsewhere.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Erin Slaughter about her journey to finding community as a writer, figuring out a balance between disclosure and dignity in poetry, THE SORROW FESTIVAL (Clash Books, 2022), writing about emotion from the body, vulnerability, the impulse to write about the self, finding form, and her forthcoming story collection.
Erin Slaughter is the author of two books of poetry: The Sorrow Festival, which is out today from Clash Books, and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun until You Remember That You Are the Sun(New Rivers Press, 2019). Her debut story collection A Manual for How to Love Us is forthcoming from Harper Perennial in 2023. She’s the co-founder of The Hunger.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Sara Lippmann about running, palpable honesty, the reissue of DOLL HOUSE (2014), the new collection JERKS (Mason Jar Press), the gaps in a person and the gaps between people, entrapment and transgression, crafting dynamic narrators with an authentic voice, the long process of writing her novel LECH (Tortoise Books), and more.
Sara Lippmann is the author of three books: JERKS, a story collection that came out this year with Mason Jar Press, LECH, a novel that’ll come out in the fall of this year with Tortoise Books, and DOLL PALACE, a story collection recently reissued from 713 Books.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with David Shields about THE VERY LAST INTERVIEW, the consequence of choosing art over life, the link between humor and hopelessness, the plots underneath his collage or "plotless" work, books that are about what they're about, a new co-written film I'LL SHOW YOU MINE, the beauty and inevitable failure of an interview, new projects, and more.
David Shields is the author of The Very Last Interview (NYRB, 2022) and over twenty previous books, including Reality Hunger and How Literature Saved My Life. He's also the director of the film Lynch: A History and cowriter of the film I'll Show You Mine.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Brad Listi about starting The Nervous Breakdown, developing the Otherppl podcast, his co-authored literary collage BOARD, his new autofiction novel BE BRIEF AND TELL THEM EVERYTHING, how his life got Buddhist and literary, balancing self-expression with the concerns of a reader, podcasts and books as engagements with consciousness, Twitter, psychedelics, confusion, the connection of his new book to his first book, and a new project about the last 100 days of 2020.
Brad Listi is the author of the novel Be Brief and Tell Them Everything (IG Publishing, 2022). His other books include the novel Attention. Deficit. Disorder and the nonfiction literary collage Board, co-authored with Justin Benton. He is the founding editor of The Nervous Breakdown and the host of the literary podcast Otherppl.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Amy Barnes about her life of writing, the influence of fairy tales, literalizing metaphor, the flash fiction form, her collection AMRBOTYPES (Word West Press), the ways in which the words get on the page, and more.
Amy Barnes is the author of the flash fiction collection AMBROTYPES (Word West Press) and the chapbooks Mother Figures and Clean up on Aisle Five. She edits for a variety of literary magazines, including Fractured Lit, Gone Lawn, and Ruby Literary.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Susannah Q. Pratt about convincing her family to attempt not buying new things for a year, feeling overwhelmed by objects in the home, the commerce systems that wrap into our lives, the way the things we own might either define or confine us, writing into ambiguity, the way this all connects to her first book MORE OR LESS, and much more.
Susannah Q. Pratt is the author of More or Less: Essays from a Year of No Buying (EastOver Press, 2022). Her work has appeared previously in Literary Mama, Motherwell, The Mindful Word, Chicago Parent, Under the Gum Tree, Essay Daily, The Week, and More. She lives in the Chicago area.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Guest host Mike Nagel talks with Graham Irvin about donating sperm, getting into reading and writing in high school, the influence of Burroughs and Brautigan, his first book LIVER MUSH (Back Patio Press), Jack Handey, the thematic glue or arc of a poetry book, books changing as life changes, and more.
Graham Irvin is the author of Liver Mush(Back Patio Press). He grew up in North Carolina and lives in Philadelphia, and you can follow him on Twitter at @grahamjirvin.
Podcast theme: Dj Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Mike Ingram about co-founding Barrelhouse, co-hosting the Book Fight podcast, attention, the evolution of his creative nonfiction book NOTES FROM THE ROAD, a novel in progress, the constraints of cnf vs the novel, and more.
Mike Ingram is the author of Notes from the Road (Awst Press). He's a co-founding editor of the literary magazine Barrelhouse and the co-host of the literary podcast Book Fight. He teaches at Temple University.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Scott Mitchel May about moving back to the midwest, working as political staffer, writing novels as practice to write more novels, The World According to Garp, his first story collection, ads on podcasts, book length, and more.
Scott Mitchel May is the author of the story collection Dekalb, Illinois Is a Paradise What Eats Its Own. His stories have appeared in Rejection Letters, The Daily Drunk, Maudlin House, Bending Genres, and elsewhere. He lives in Wisconsin.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Sara Rauch about the imaginative properties of creative nonfiction, writing into questions without answers, writing about affairs and heartbreak, the making of the second Autofocus book XO, trying to connect everything and make it mean something, dealing with the reality of with putting very personal writing into the world, and more.
Sara Rauch is the author XO, the second book published by Autofocus, which is out today, so go check that out. She is also the author of What Shines from It: Stories, which won the Electric Book Award for Alternating Current Press. She lives in Massachusetts with her family.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Shane Kowalski about working at the post office, reading tastes changing, keeping a daily fiction blog for ten years, his collection of fiction SMALL MOODS, writing weird stuff in a traditional program, the daring use of ellipsis, and more.
Shane Kowalski is the author of the full-length fiction collection Small Moods(Future Tense, 2022) and the chapbooks Dog Understander (Frontier Slumber Press) and How I Solve How I Feel(Ghost City Press). He lives outside of Philadelphia.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Cynthia Arrieu-King about filling blank books as a kid, quilting, her creative nonfiction book THE BETWEENS, writing about race, taking breaks, collaging anecdotes on a theme, and much more.
Cynthia Arrieu-King is the author of four books of poetry, including Futureless Languages (Radiator Press, 2018) and Continuity (Octopus Books,2021), in addition to the literary nonfiction book The Betweens,which also came out last year with Noemi Press.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with DeMisty Bellinger about learning to read early, taking the love of a literature to a phD, the development of her forthcoming novel NEW TO LIBERTY, her poetry collection PECULIAR HERITAGE, the degree to which all writing is personal, coming to the page to write a poem, writing from reading, and more.
DeMisty Bellinger is the author of the chapbook Rubbing Elbows (Finishing Line Press), the poetry collection Peculiar Heritage (Mason Jar Press), and the forthcoming novel New to Liberty (Unnamed Press), which is now available for preorder. Besides writing, she is a poetry editor at Malarkey Books, an alumni reader at Prairie Schooner, and a professor at Fitchburg State University.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Colleen Kinder about living in several different countries, navigating new environments with a toddler, the roots of her love of reading, writing, and travel, the genesis of Off Assignment, editing the anthology LETTER TO A STRANGER, the effect of direct address for a reader and writer, her memoir-in-progress, and more.
Colleen Kinder is an essayist whose work has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, The New Republic, A Public Space, National Geographic Traveler, and many other magazines. She is a cofounder of Off Assignment and the editor of the anthology Letter to A Stranger: Essays to the Ones Who Haunt Us, which is out from Algonquin Books on March 22.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Diane Exavier about growing up and living in Flatbush, playwriting and participatory theater, writing through grief and about family, books as events, poems as integers, and why her book cover matches her walls.
Diane Exavier is a writer, theatermaker, and educator who creates performances, public programs, and games that invite audiences to participate in a theater that rejects passive reception. She is the author of book THE MATH OF ST. FELIX (The 3rd Thing, 2021). Find more at dianeexavier.live
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Travis Cravey about his foot getting run over and then starting to write, his flash fiction collection MANIFOLD, parachute stories, his first car and his current car, authenticity in writing, and more.
Travis Cravey is a mechanic and maintenance main from Southern Pennsylvania. He's the author of the flash fiction collection Manifold (ELJ, 2021) and an editor for Malarkey Books. You can follow him on twitter: @TravisCravey.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Mike Nagel about getting into literature and writing, acknowledging artifice in an essay, accessing literature's unique qualities, the very first Autofocus book DUPLEX, turning the mundane absurd, pandemic drinking, accidentally writing a book, writing between genres and lengths, the wonderful uselessness of literature, and much more.
Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex (Autofocus Books, 2022). His essays have appeared in apt, Hobart, Split Lip, Salt Hill, DIAGRAM, and elsewhere around the internet. He lives in Plano, Texas.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Zac Smith about burning out on linguistics, getting into writing, writing in collaboration, his poetry collection 50 BARN POEMS, poems as jokes/jokes as poems, his story collection EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY FINE, deadpan humor, sentence energy, performing first person, the fine lines of gimmicks, and more.
Zac Smith is the author of EVERYTHING IS TOTALLY FINE (Muumuu House, 2021) and 50 BARN POEMS (Clash Books, 2019). His writing has been published by Hobart, X-Ray, Maudlin House, New World Writing, Wigleaf, Bending Genres, and other magazines.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Francesca Kritikos about refinding an identity in the daily grind, her forthcoming collection Exercise in Desire, the influence of pop music, punctuation, short vs. long poems, writing about the body, and more.
Francesca Kritikos is a Greek-American writer and editor based in Chicago. She is the author of the poetry collection Exercise in Desire (forthcoming from Vegetarian Alcoholic Press) and the chapbooks It Felt Like Worship (Sad Spell Press, 2017) and Animals Don't Go to Hell (Bottlecap Press, 2021). You can find links to her various works on Instagram: @fmkrit.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Chris Gonzalez about early reading and writing experiences, his story collection I'M NOT HUNGRY BUT I COULD EAT, narrators and characters in the same world, determining POV, ordering a collection, changing forms, therapy as a useful part of the writing process, and more.
Chris Gonzalez is a queer Puerto Rican writer living in New York. He is the author of the short story collection I’m Not Hungry but I Could Eat (SFWP, 2021). His writing appears in the Nation, Catapult, the Millions, Little Fiction, the Forge, Lunch Ticket, Cosmonauts Avenue, and elsewhere. He currently serves as fiction editor at Barrelhouse.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Sebastian Castillo about having fun writing, impatience as a reader, first person, his books, form as plot, blurring the personal and fictional, modification as a digital writing process, Twitter, a new collection, and more.
Sebastian Castillo is the author of Not I (Word West Press) and 49 Venezuelan Novels (Bottlecap Press).
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Sarah Minor about her visual and installation art, her collection of visual essays Bright Archive (Rescue Press), the process of making mixed media literature, her newest book Slim Confessions (Noemi Press), the importance of tension rather than plot in creative non-fiction work, and more.
Sarah Minor is a writer, interdisciplinary artist, and the author of the The Persistence of The Bonyleg: Annotated (Essay Press, 2016), Bright Archive (Rescue Press, 2020), and most recently Slim Confessions: The Universe as a Spider or Spit (Noemi Press, 2021). In addition to curating the visual essays at Essay Daily and video essays at TriQuarterly Review, she is currently teaching writing at the University of Iowa.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Jim Reese about teaching writing at a prison, teaching writing at a college, the midwest, his first collection of essays Bone Chalk, the ways working in poetry previously helped or didn't help him in prose, and more.
Jim Reese is a writer and teacher from the midwest. He’s the author of the essay collection Bone Chalk and three previous collections of poems. A fourth collection, Dancing Room Only, is forthcoming from New York Quarterly Books.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Brain Oliu about his path to writing, pro wrestling storytelling, the process of writing Body Drop: Notes on Fandom and Pain in Professional Wrestling, confession in creative non-fiction, the strange shame around being an adult pro wrestling fan, the influence of it on our culture, and more.
Brian Oliu is a writer and writing instructor at the University of Alabama. He’s the co-author of Enter Your Initials for Record Keeping (Uncaany Valley) and What Shot Did You Ever Take? (The Hunger Press), and the solo author of several more books, including Leave Luck to Heaven (Uncaany Valley) and, most recently, Body Drop: Notes on Fandom and Pain in Professional Wrestling (UNC Press).
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Meghan Phillips about bringing her first chapbook into the world, crafting a voice at the sentence level, pens & notebooks, the daunting task of novel writing, reading as a comfort, kids TV, filling in gaps of nostalgic pop culture, and more!
Meghan Phillips is a writer and editor who was a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow in 2020. Her short fiction has been anthologized in Best Microfiction 2019, 2020, & 2021 and The Best Small Fictions 2019. Her sold out flash fiction chapbook Abstinence Only from is available right now for free as an e-book from Barrelhouse.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Sari Fordham about growing up in Uganda as an Adventist during a human rights crisis, environmental activism and reacting to climate change, getting to know her late mother through writing the memoir WAIT FOR GOD TO NOTICE (Etruscan Press), becoming a mother while working on the book, and more.
Sari Fordham is the author of the memoir Wait for God to Notice (Etruscan Press). Her work has appeared in Chattahoochee Review, Brevity, Passages North, Best of the Net, and many other places. She teaches creative writing at La Sierra University.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Tope Folarin about his first trip back to Salt Lake City in 27 years, decolonizing art, the whiteness of autofiction in the critical sphere, directing The Institute of Policy Studies, his debut novel A Particular Kind of Black Man, the naming of main characters in autofiction, a next book in progress, and more.
Tope Folarin is a Nigerian-American writer based in Washington DC. His debut novel, A Particular Kind of Black Man, was published by Simon & Schuster in 2019, and he has garnered many awards for his work, including the Caine Prize for African Writing and more recently the Whiting Award for Fiction.
If you'd like to hear Tope Folarin talk more about autofiction and whiteness (and more), check out his previous conversation with Teresa Carmody and Ryan Rivas on the Autofocus YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qc7T0yQ45fg.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Kara Vernor about animals, coffee, mugs, writing flash, writing from and not from the personal, first vs. third person narrators, drafting and revision based on genre, and more.
Kara Vernor is the writer of the short collection Because I Wanted to Write You a Pop Song (Split Lip Press). Her fiction and essays have appeared in Ninth Letter, The Normal School, Gulf Coast, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and elsewhere, and she runs the @mugshot_writers Instagram account featuring photos and anecdotes of writers and their mugs.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Selah Saterstrom about initiations into the medium of language and the study of creative writing, divinatory poetics and the writing process, her recent book Rancher (Burrow Press), healing and writing in community, and much more.
Selah Saterstrom is the author of three novels (all from Coffee House Press), the collection Ideal Suggestions: Essays in Divinatory Poetics (Essay Press), and most recently the book-length essay Rancher (Burrow Press). She teaches and lectures across the United States, and is the director of Creative Writing at the University of Denver.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Avni Vyas about building an endurance for joy, the path to her first solo poetry collection, the presence of a father who passed, drafting ambidextrously, handwriting, speakers of poems in conversation, a vivid compact style, and more.
Avni Vyas is a poet living and writing in Florida. Her new book of poems, Little God, is out now from Burrow Press. She is the essays editor at Honey Literary and poetry editor at The Offending Adam. You can find her on Twitter @AvniDangerfield and Instagram @singstooloud.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Berholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Betsy Bonner about being a poet by default, her memoir The Book of Atlantis Black (Tin House Books), writing about family and the mystery of a missing sister, collaging her sister's voice into her own narrative, mental illness & social media, the process of writing memoir through grief, whether there's closure, and more.
Betsy Bonner is the author of the poetry collection Round Lake (Four Way Books) and the memoir The Book of Atlantis Black (Tin House Books), which is out now in paperback. She is a former director of the 92 Y Poetry Center, where she now teaches creative writing. She is a fellow of the MacDowell Colony and the T. S. Eliot House.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Michael Seidlinger about his path to writing, a love of horror, video games, his former press Civil Coping Mechanisms, his new book RUNAWAYS (Future Tense Books), the bonkers and broken system of publishing, falling back on a love of writing, processes based on the book, and more.
Michael Seidlinger is a Filipino American author of My Pet Serial Killer, Dreams of Being, The Fun We’ve Had,and many other books. His newest, Runaways, is out now from Future Tense Books. You can find him online on Facebook, Twitter (@mjseidlinger), and Instagram (@michaelseidlinger).
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Jen Winston about launching their first book of essays, upkeeping a popular social media account, unlearning, bisexuality, writing a book on a tight deadline, incorporating different forms into essay writing, AOL Instant Messenger, the prospect of parenthood, and more.
Jen Winston (she/they) is the author of the essay collection Greedy: Notes from a Bisexual Who Wants Too Much, which is out now from Atria Books. Their writing has been featured in TheWall Street Journal, TheWashington Post, CNN, and more. You can follow Jen on Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter: @Jenerous.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Todd Dillard about his every day, his family, video games, comic books, coming to poetry, his first collection WAYS WE VANISH, writing the personal surreally, short books, process, new work, and more.
Todd Dillard’s debut poetry collection Ways We Vanish came out it 2020 with Okay Donkey Press, and he’s had work appear in The Offing, Electric Literature, The Adroit Journal, Fairy Tale Review, HAD, and here in Autofocus.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Lyd Havens about moving back to Boise, their recent book of poetry CHOKECHERRY, losing family to suicide, growing up too early, grief, writers in the family, finding the right word, finishing a thesis, writing in other forms, and more.
Lyd Havens is the author of the chapbooks I Gave Birth to All the Ghosts Here (Nostrovia! Press, 2018) and Chokecherry(Game Over Books, 2021). Their work has previously been published in Ploughshares, The Shallow Ends, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Autofocus, and various other literary magazines.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Rob Fromberg about his childhood in a family of alcohol, art, & autism, moving out to New York City alone as a teen, his new scene-driven fragmented memoir about it all, the role of autobiography across his work, the influence of his brother on his art & life, writing now more than ever, and more.
Robert Fromberg is the author of the brand new memoir, How to Walk with Steve, from Latah Books, and recent prose of his has appear in journals, such as Hobart, Los Angeles Review of Books, Litro Magazine.In addition,he’s a frequent contributor for the Dilly Doun Review, where he writes about autism and creativity.Robert Fromberg is the author of the brand new memoir, How to Walk with Steve, from Latah Books, and recent prose of his has appear in journals, such as Hobart, Los Angeles Review of Books, Litro Magazine.In addition, he’s a frequent contributor for the Dilly Doun Review, where he writes about autism and creativity.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with David Kirby about his parents, the impact of early rock n roll on him, the course of his life in poetry, his new collection, the use of information in his poetry, the length and form of his poems, processes of drafting and revision, the difference between poem and essay, the use of humor in his work, and more.
David Kirby's collection The House on Boulevard St.: New and Selected Poemswas a finalist for the National Book Award in 2007. Kirby is the author ofLittle Richard: The Birth of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which the Times Literary Supplementof London called “a hymn of praise to the emancipatory power of nonsense.” His latest poetry collection is Help Me, Information.He teaches English at Florida State University.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission form Bertholet.
Michael talks with Shawn Berman about sharing 350 square feet, starting The Daily Drunk, writing humor poems and essays about his life in pop culture, coming up with titles, writing in direct address, the influence of stand-up, his Adam Sandler obsession, 90's film comedies, 90's Nickelodeon, WWF Attitude, watching stuff during the pandemic lockdown, writing a YA novel, and more.
Shawn Berman is the editor of The Daily Drunk, an online journal for humorous writing. You can find his own work published all over the internet and in his collection of poems, Mr. Funnyman, and also his collection of essays, At the Movies (Alien Buddha Press), both of which came out this year in print.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Taylor Byas about the release of BLOODWARM, Twitter feeds becoming too much, saving yourself, writing about race and patriarchy through the personal, revising while drafting, finding the form for the content, erasure, Mama Byas, her forthcoming full-length with Soft Skull Press, lineated vs. prose poetry, and more.
Taylor Byas is a Black poet and essayist. She is a PhD student and Yates scholar at the University of Cincinnati, and an Assistant Features Editor for The Rumpus.Her chapbook, BLOODWARM, is out now from Variant Lit(2021), and her debut full-length poetry collection, I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, is forthcoming from Soft Skull Pressin the Spring of 2023.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with D.T. Robbins about taking a break from drinking, his childhood, his divorce, his remarriage, publishing his first book of "poems," starting Rejection Letters, the persona at play on Twitter & in the book, the relationship of professional wrestling to it all, and more.
D.T. Robbins lives in Southern California with his wife and two kids. He’s founding editor of Rejection Letters whose writing his been published all over the internet in journal such as Hobart, HAD, X-Ray, Maudlin House, Bending Genres, and No Contact. His first book, This Is What Happens When You Leave Me Alone, is out now from Rejection Letters Press.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Favorite Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Lucas Mann about becoming a father after his third book, Reality TV, the different modes of his nonfiction work, the importance of friction in writing, his newest and upcoming work, whether fragmentary autobiographical literature is a gimmick (no), and more.
Lucas Mann is the author of three books: Captive Audience: On Love and Reality Television, Lord Fear: A Memoir, and Class A: Baseball in the Middle of Everywhere. His essays have appeared in outlets such as the LA Review of Books, Guernica, BuzzFeed, Slate, Barrelhouse,TriQuarterly, and The Kenyon Review. He teaches creative writing at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth and lives in Providence, Rhode Island with his wife and daughter.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Favorite Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Matt Mitchell about moving to Columbus, getting into poetry after high school, Hanif Abdurraqib, writing The Neon Hollywood Cowboy & Grown Ocean & his next book, rock memoirs, listening to classics, Westerns, and more.
Matt Mitchell is a poet and culture writer from Ohio. His music writing has been featured in Pitchfork, Paste, and Bandcamp, and his first collection of poems The Neon Hollywood Cowboy came out from Big Lucks earlier this year. His next collection, Grown Ocean, is available for preorder now from Word West.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks to Courtney Cook about borderline personality disorder in her life and the media, her path to publishing her first graphic memoir with Tin House, dealing with the vulnerability and secrets in autobiographical books in real life, and more.
Courtney Cooks’s personal essays have been published by outlets such as The Guardian, The Rumpus, Hobart, Lunch Ticket, and Split Lip Magazine. And her graphic memoir, THE WAY SHE FEELS: MY LIFE ON THE BORDERLINE IN PICTURES AND PIECES, is out today from Tin House.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Danielle Rose about her family of readers, coming to poetry from punk rock, competitive virtual racing, writing personal work at a distance, recent chapbooks, coming back to writing after a break, writing that's aware of itself, working with Greek myth, George Mallory, and much more.
Danielle Rose lives in Massachusetts. She is the author of at first & then from Black Lawrence Press & The History of Mountains from Variant Lit. Her work can be found in publications such as Hobart, HAD, Palette, Sundog Lit, Autofocus, and more.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Bud Smith about heavy construction, making time to write, a new revision process involving a typewriter, his upcoming "major label debut," the social aspect of being a writer, Kurt Vonnegut, new projects, and more!
Bud Smith works heavy construction and lives in Jersey City, NJ. He is the author of Teenager (forthcoming from Vintage in spring of ’22), Double Bird (Maudlin House, 2018), Dust Bunny City (Disorder Press, 2017), among others. His fiction has been published in The Paris Review, and The Nervous Breakdown. He is also a creative writing teacher and editor.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Amorak Huey about growing up in Alabama, his mother's house burning down, his father's writing, his path to poetry, his fourth book of poems Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications 2021), publishing, sitcoms, other writing projects, the trickiness of giving and receiving feedback on poetry, and more!
Amorak Huey is author of four poetry collections: Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy (Sundress Publications, 2021); Boom Box (Sundress Publications, 2019); Seducing the Asparagus Queen (Cloudbank Books, 2018), winner of the Vern Rutsala Poetry Prize; and Ha Ha Ha Thump (Sundress Publications, 2015). In addition, he is co-author, with W. Todd Kaneko, of the textbook Poetry: A Writer’s Guide and Anthology, published by Bloomsbury Academic in January 2018, and the poetry chapbook Slash / Slash, forthcoming from Diode Editions in June 2021.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Amy Fusselman about life before her first book, feeling more vulnerable now writing fiction, the embryo of her novel-in-progress, the option of hippos, video games, the dilemma of writing about people you know, fear & safety, being a cranky reader of fiction, and more!
Amy Fusselman is author of four books: The Pharmacist’s Mate, 8, Savage Park, and Idiophone, which was a finalist for the Believer Book Award in 2018. She’s had essays appear in The Washington Post, The New York Times,and The Atlantic, and youcan sign up for her really fun newsletter AMY AF through her website amyfusselman.com.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Bertholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Aaron Burch about starting Hobart in the early 2000's, the phenomenon of HAD on Twitter, his forthcoming novel Year of the Buffalo, divorce, (lack of) ambition, and more.
Aaron Burch is the author of the memoir/literary analysis Stephen King's The Body; the short story collection, Backswing; and the novella, How to Predict the Weather. He is the Founding Editor of HOBART and its recent off-shoot literary magazine HAD.
Podcast theme: "Special Sause" by DJ Garlik & Berholet used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Marie Conlan about anti-memoir, intergenerational trauma, contextualizing yourself in a lineage, expecting a child, building a house on a mountain, and more.
Marie Conlan's first book Say Mother, Say Hand is out now from Half Mystic Press. She's a Midwest poet living and writing in Colorado, where she is a co-collaborator with the .OFF collective and Nocturne Lucid Writing Workshops. She was named a finalist for the Noemi Press Book Award in 2017 and 2018, a finalist for the Airlie Press Prize in 2018, and a finalist for Metatron’s 2018 Rising Authors Prize. She earned her MFA at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik & Betholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks with Heather Sweeney about finding oneself as a writer/artist, wading through the muck of social media, and all sorts of things in between.
Heather Sweeney is a writer, teacher, and visual artist in San Diego. She's also the author of the collections, Dear Marshall, Language is Our Only Wilderness (Spuyten Duyvil Press) and Call Me California (Finishing Line Press). Her chapbooks include Just Let Me Have This (Selcouth Station Press), Same Bitch, Different Era: The Real Housewives Poems (above/ground press), and most recently, The Book of Likes (The Hunger Press). You can find her on Instagram and at www.heathercsweeney.com.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik and Bertholet's "Favorite Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael & Ryan talk with Tyler Gillespie about Florida, interviewing the kind of people who wrestle alligators, writing essay vs. poetry, balancing it all, and Gay Days at Disney.
Tyler’s new book, The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State (University of Florida Press), is available now. He is a fifth-generation Floridian, a poet, and an award-winning journalist who has written for GQ, the Guardian, the Nation, VICE, and Salon. His previous book was Florida Man: Poems.
Michael & Ryan talk with Jennifer Calkins about her novel Fugitive Assemblage (The 3rd Thing, 2020), evolutionary biology, environmental law, aliens, viruses, personal hauntedness, and more.
This is our first podcast under our new name, The Lives of Writers.
Podcast theme: Dj Garlik and Betholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael and Ryan talk with Erin Slaughter and Lena Ziegler, editors of The Hunger, about collaboration and confession in their ongoing co-authored memoir project and in their individual work as PhD candidates.
In this episode, we were still using the name, The Autofocus Literary Podcast.
Podcast theme: Dj Garlik and Betholet's "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael talks to David Shields, Nick Toti, and Rachel Kempf about The Very Last Interview (Shields's forthcoming book), film-adapted by Toti and Kempf and released this month. Shields is the author of over twenty books including Reality Hunger, Other People, How Literature Saved My Life, The Trouble with Men, That Thing You Do With Your Mouth, etc. While The Very Last Interview will not be released until early 2022 by New York Review Books, Toti released the 30 minute short earlier this month via Vimeo.
In this episode, we were still using the name, The Autofocus Literary Podcast.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik and Bertholet "Special Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael and Ryan talk with Ariel Francisco and Alysia Sawchyn, both of whom released books in 2020 with Burrow Press, about autobiographical writing in poem and essay forms, among other things.
In this episode, we were still using the name, The Autofocus Literary Podcast.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik and Bertholet's "Favorite Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael and Ryan talk with Teresa Carmody about her new book THE RECONCEPTION OF MARIE, autobiographical fiction vs. autofiction vs. Roman à clef, the history of the "novel-essay," and more.
Teresa Carmody’s writing includes fiction, creative nonfiction, inter-arts collaborations, and hybrid forms. She is the author of three books and four chapbooks. Her writing was selected for the &NOW Awards: The Best Innovative Writing (2009) and by Entropy for its Best Online Articles and Essays list of 2019. In her writing, Carmody explores issues of spirituality, gossip, intersubjectivity and perception, queer relations, friendship, embodiment and the archive, intersectional feminism, and autofiction/autotheory.
In this episode, we were still using the name, The Autofocus Literary Podcast.
Podcast theme: DJ Garlik and Bertholet's "Favorite Sause" used with permission from Bertholet.
Michael and Ryan discuss their favorite kinds of autobiographical writing, the most recent thing they've read, the term Creative Nonfiction, process based on genre, and more.
In this episode, we were still using the name, The Autofocus Literary Podcast.