Episodes
-
Missing episodes?
-
On this week’s show, John King talks to the novelist Kent Wascom about the continuation of the Woolsack legacy in his new novel, The Great State of West Florida. We discuss the vibrantly chaos of Florida, the postmodern pulp possibilities of the western genre, and the importance of a great book cover.
-
On this week’s show, Johnj talk to the poet David McLoghlin about his newest collection of poems, Crash Centre, and history, religion, rugby, boarding school, trauma, and exiting the comforts of metaphor.
-
In this week’s show, John talks with Daniel Handler about the absurd fun of stress-testing reality, the joys of listening to Sun Ra & Prince, the efficacy of writing on ordinary writing pads, and the importance of waiting for the good stuff to come to us as writers.
-
After discussing World War I with Michael Korda on episode 622, this week I speak with Ann Hood about her newest novel, The Stolen Child, which features a storyline about artists during World War I. During this interview, I may have defended IHOP perhaps too strenuously. Talking with Ann was, as always, charming.
-
In this week’s show, John talks with Nicholson Baker about the potential sorrows of writing, the drive to discover joy, and the need to explore other creative endeavors besides writing.
-
In this week’s show, John talks with prose writer Michael Korda about telling the historical stories of the poets of World War I.
-
In this week’s show, John talks with Tyler Mills about her extraordinary multimedia memoir, a poetic people’s history of America’s secretive relationship to the atomic bomb.
-
In this week’s show, John talks with Jessie Red Marshall about her extraordinary short story collection, Women! In! Peril! The topics discussed include how story collections are like mixtapes, how thematic unity occurs brilliantly by accident, and how the interesting questions to ask ourselves in writing fiction is often what about ourselves, as writers, is problematic to ourselves.
-
In this week’s show, John talks to Marie Mutsuki Mockett about her exquisite new novel, The Tree Doctor, which leads us to the topics of Japanese literature, The Tale of Genji, and how the ancient world is surprisingly like our own.
-
On today's show, Rachael and I discuss George Saunders's discussion of seven short stories by Russian authors. Since Saunders's book is the result of teaching these stories in MFA craft courses over multiple decades, this book and today's discussion simulates an important part of the MFA experience, for those who wonder what that might be like.
The stories:
Anton Chekhov's "In the Cart" (1897) Ivan Turgenev's "The Singers" (1852) Anton Chekhov's "The Darling" (1899) Leo Tolstoy's "Master and Man" (1895) Nikolai Gogol's "The Nose" (1836) Anton Chekhov's "Gooseberries" (1898) Leo Tolstoy's "Alyosha The Pot" (1905) -
This ep. features a conversation with Pulitzer prize-winning poet Diane Seuss about her latest book of verse, Modern Poetry. With bursts of internal rhyme about thorny subjects, Modern Poetry awaits the reader with a spirit of mourning and loss and self-creation, which is, for this reader anyway, joyous.
- Show more