On this week’s show, I present my interview with Edwidge Danticat,

and my interview with Koren Zailckas,

plus Samantha Stemler writes about Neil McKenna's The Secret Life of Oscar Wilde.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5I_3co-6Dw

The Drunken Odyssey now has a youtube channel.

According to the Kids' Right to Read Project, 2013 has been a record year for attempts to ban books in libraries in schools. The Diary of Anne Frank, you know, is too pornographic for American children to be exposed to. This was reported in The Guardian.

The Heaven of Animals, the forthcoming collection from friend-of-the-show David James Poissant, is available for pre-order. Please support the launch of his book, which is wonderful reading.

On this week’s show, I present my interview with the poet Richard Blanco,

Plus Kenneth Nichol's writes about reading Tom Perrotta's Joe College.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

On this week’s show, I present TDO’s Repeal Day party, starring Robert Cassanelo, Mark Pursell, Hunter Choate, Leslie Salas, Anna King, Dan Lauer, and Teege Braune!

The venue (photo by Leslie Salas)

Robert Cassanello, preparing to read the opening piece (photo by Leslie Salas)

Mark Pursell on his long ago teetotaling days (photo by Leslie Salas)

Ah (photo by Leslie Salas)

Hunter reads a ghost story told over vodkas (photo by Leslie Salas)

City Fish was a wonderful location (photo by Leslie Salas)

Anna King versifies on drinking Granadas at the Marriot Marquis (photo by Leslie Salas)

Dan Lauer about a binge with the owner of the Murder Museum (photo by Leslie Salas)

On my third drink, I am finally smiling (photo by Leslie Salas)

Madison Bernath contemplates a world in which the repeal never happened (photo by Leslie Salas)

Teege takes it home (photo by Leslie Salas)

NOTES

The Heaven of Animals, the forthcoming collection from friend-of-the-show David James Poissant, is available for pre-order. Please support the launch of his book, which is wonderful reading.

On this week’s show, I interview the legend Nikki Giovanni,

plus Peter Biello writes about reading Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

NOTES

Peter Biello’s essay on The Road featured “Found Children” from Carlton Melton’s Pass it On.

The Heaven of Animals, the forthcoming collection from friend-of-the-show David James Poissant, is available for pre-order. Please support the launch of his book, which is wonderful reading.

On this week’s show, I talk to three of the stars of Orlando Shakespeare Theatre's production of The Taming of the Shrew.

Geoffrey Kent (Petruchio)

And Deanna Gibson (Kate)

John Ahlin (Baptista)

And J. Bradley talks about being haunted by The Cure.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

 NOTES

OST's The Taming of the Shrew runs September 11th through October 6th.

Get tickets here.

On this week’s show, I talk to the poet Tim J. Myers,

Plus Dan Lauer explains the impact Spalding Gray's Swimming to Cambodia had on him.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

Walter Pater: "All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music" (From The School of Giogione).

Think about helping Beating Windward Press fund new art for its Doc Voodoo pulp fiction series. The swag is considerable, like this t-shirt.

On this week's show, I talk to the poet Philip Raisor,

Plus Melissa Crandall brings us some Xmas in July!

TEXTS DISCUSSED

On this week’s show, I share a Functionally Literate event I participated in back in May with Monica Wendel and Philip Deaver.

This was an accidental DO reunion, since Monica was a guest on episodes 5  and 49,  and Philip was a guest on episode 35. Alas, Enid Schumer could not attend.

On this week’s show, I talk to the essayist and novelist Chuck Klosterman,

Plus John McCaffrey discusses Leo Durocher's Nice Guys Finish Last.

BOOKS DISCUSSED

NOTES

On July 9th, Mattew Peters will read prose at There Will be Words in Downtown Orlando.

See our kickstarter campaign to travel to Weeki Wachee Springs to interview Lu Vickers about Florida literature and the world famous Weeki Wachee mermaids. We reached our goal on day 1, but we welcome your continued contributions to keep the show going strong!

The Drunken Odyssey Deeply Recommends

When I complained that Britney Spears was in Esquire back in the early paleolithic days of 2004, I confess I didn't dwell sufficiently on what Chuck Klosteman's article said about her cognitive dissonance, although his words were competing with Britney Spears's anatomy at the time.

On May 14th, 1988, Atlantic Records held a 40th Anniversary Concert during which, in my infallible opinion, and it pained me to say this, Debbie Gibson outplayed Led Zeppelin. Want to disagree? Watch the footage:

Debbie Gibson

Led Zeppelin

For the record, Jason Bonham was drumming, although I don't this Hindenburg of a performance can be blamed on him.

According to a Times profile, Alice Munro is retiring.

According to The Guardian, Neil Gaiman is writing a new Sandman series.

On this week’s show, I talk to the philosopher Bruce Janz,

Plus Robert Jacobs shares his Facebook posts.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Check out Keith B. Harder's Children of Icarus series here.

NOTES

See our kickstarter campaign to travel to Weeki Wachee Springs to interview Lu Vickers about Florida literature and the world famous Weeki Wachee mermaids. We reached our goal on day 1, but anything over that will go into the show.

On July 9th, Matt Peters will read prose at There Will be Words in Downtown Orlando.

On this week’s show, I share the live Bloomsday event!

NOTES

See our kickstarter campaign to travel to Weeki Wachee Springs to interview Lu Vickers about Florida literature and the world famous Weeki Wachee mermaids.

Richard Peabody, our guest on episode 45, has a new audio book of poems available through Eat Poems.  Sample the poems, then pay what you wish for the download!

On Saturday, June 22, from 5 to 8, The Drunken Odyssey will sink anchor here:

Episode 53 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk to Cheryl Strayed,

Plus I share the piece that first made me read Cheryl Strayed’s work, Deborah Weaver’s essay about Wild.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

On June 22, The Drunken Odyssey will be here:

•

Recent reports about the National Security Agency’s PRISM data collection program have apparently lead to a spike in sales of George Orwell’s 1984 (although PRISM is really only  a minor example of the erosion not only of our privacy, but our reality, according to the philosopher Peter Ludlow).

On this week’s show, I talk once again to Nathan Holic, who first appeared on this show all the way back on episode 1,

Plus Drew Perlmutter discusses the Cannes Film Festival,

Plus Nicholas Brown discusses Larry McMurtry's Lonesome Dove.

Texts Discussed

NOTES

On this week’s show, I answer some mail with my friend, David James Poissant,

Plus Cathy Day Addresses The Man Who Called Her On the Phone Asking for Advice About How to Get Published.

Notes

Cathy Day's essay first appeared on her blog, right here.

If you are in Central Florida on June 16th, come celebrate Bloomsday with us!

Book Fight's Exceedingly Accurate Blurb:

“The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life is a supernova, an interstellar jamboree of colors and lights, like the twirling dresses of a troupe of champion folk dancers, like being imprisoned in Ace Freeley’s amp, throbbing like the veins in Jehovah’s hard-on.  You can look, but you can’t touch, and also, you can’t look, because if you do, you will turn to stone, and your guts will turn to marble.”

According to The Times, there was controversy over the spelling of the word that won the national spelling bee championship.  Is this anti-semitic orthography?

On this week’s show, I talk to the memoir writer David Sedaris,

plus Pamela Skjolsvik discusses David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day,

Texts Discussed

Notes

On this week’s show, I interview my friend, the poet Monica Wendel, who is in residency at The Kerouac House,

Photo by Ashley Inguanta

plus Chelsey Clammer writes about Marya Hornbacher’s Madness.

Texts Discussed

Notes

Two great Orlando events are coming up this week:

1. On Wednesday, May 22, 7 PM, the fiction writer Colin Winnette will be reading in the sOFT eXPOSURE reading series.  Get details here.

2. On Saturday, May 25th, please come to Monica’s farewell reading at The Kerouac House.  Get details here.

See the Glossary’s Film of David Foster Wallace’s This is Water.

Episode 48 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is here!

On this week's show, I interview the fiction writer Dylan Landis

plus the poet Eleanor Lerman writes about Leonard Cohen's Spice Box of Earth.

Episode 47 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is now available.

This week, it's a great live event!

Notes

If you live in Central Florida, come to the next event in Jared Sylvia's Functionally Literate series, despite the fact that I am reading there.

Episode 45 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is available.

This week, I talk to the poet Terry Ann Thaxton,

Plus Madison Bernath reviews 360 GLAZED DONUT VODKA!

Texts Discussed

Notes

Madison's review of 360 Glazed Donut Vodka first appeared on McSweeney's Internet Tendency.

Wikipedia decides that women aren't "American novelists," according to this Times story.

I'll be reading with Philip Deaver, Monica Wendel, and Enid Schumer on May 11th at the Timucua Arts White House.

On Episode 45 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, I talk to Richard Peabody, the editor of Gargoyle Magazine,

Plus Kirsten Holt reads a beautiful elegy.

Texts Discussed

Episode 44 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is npw available.

This week, I talk to the poet and VIDA's co-founder Erin Belieau,

Plus Julie Henderson discusses Clive Barker's The Thief of Always.

Texts Discussed

Notes

Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s Titus Andronicus runs through April 28.

Pablo Neruda's body is being exhumed, after his poetry was last month desecrated by a Kentucky Senator.

Ireland mints a James Joyce coin.  Textual scholars are already at work discrediting the text.

Music for this week’s essay provided by Steven McClurg.

On episode 43 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, I talk to the poet Lillian-Yvonne Bertram,

Plus James Best discusses Gatsby.

Texts Discussed

Carlton Melton's Photos of Photos.

Notes

Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s Titus Andronicus runs through April 28.

Music for this week’s essay provided by Carlton Melton.

Grrr: Amazon buys Goodreads.com.

The Tequila Worms have generously offered their album Cantina as a free download.

Episode 42 is here.

This week, I talk to Stephen Elliott and Isaac Fitzgerald of The Rumpus, 

plus Astrid Cooke writes about Stephen King's The Stand.

Texts Discussed

Isaac Fitzgerald's Why I Agreed to be a Bend-over Boyfriend.

Notes

Orlando Shakespeare Theater's Titus Andronicus runs through April 28.

Music for this week's essay provided by Zelda Re-orchestrated.

Chinua Achebe, Literary Titan, dies at 82.

Episode 41 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk to the poet and teacher Emily Brandt,

Plus Denise Falcone talks about Nabokov's Ada.

Texts Discussed

The Inside Colocation blog.

I love the ad-free dictionary aggregator, wordnik.

The New Yorker Rejects Itself.

On episode 40, I talk to the poet Tony Hoagland,

Plus Bob Lamb Explains How Ernest Hemingway saved him from Rendition.

Texts Discussed

Show Notes

This episode begins with a limerick written and read by Chris Booth, in honor of our pal Steve Kelly:

Episode 39 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is now available.

On this week’s show, I talk to Rick Moody,

James Best explains why he isn't afraid of sharks,

Plus I talk to the playwright and actor Charlie Bethel about his current one man show of The Odyssey.

Texts Discussed

Notes

The Drunken Odyssey will be making a pub crawl in Boston this Friday.

On this week’s show, I talk to the fiction writer Matthew Pitt,

plus Pamela Skjolsvik discusses David Sedaris’s Me Talk Pretty One Day.

Texts Discussed

Ishmael Reed’s WSJ blog about Django Unchained.

Kirtsen Holt’s new poem, Taxonomy.

Richie Havens’s “Freedom”

Notes:

Orlando Shakespeare Theatre presents Othello, now through March 16th.

On this week’s show, I talk to the poet Steve Davenport,

Joe Conley plums Cormac McCarthy's Child of God,

Plus I answer some mail...

Texts Discussed:

Notes:

Orlando Shakespeare Theatre presents Othello, now through March 16th.

Throughout February, Rollins College will be hosting its annual author series, Winter with the Writers.

On this week’s show, The Drunken Odyssey All-Stars & I get erotic, poetically speaking...

The Drunken Odyssey All-Stars

______________________________

Vanessa Blakeslee

Tod Caviness

Genevieve Tyrrell

Anna King

Ryan Rivas

Kirsten Holt

Susan Lilley

Plus

A letter from James Best,

A limerick from Christopher Booth,

and show & tell with Lisa Claire Roney!

Episode 35 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is available.

On this week’s show, I talk with my friend Philip F. Deaver, who happens to have won a Flannery O'Conner Award,

plus Helena-Anne Htittel discusses Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner.

Texts Discussed:

Notes

Throughout February, Rollins College will be hosting its annual author series, Winter with the Writers.

Orlando Shakespeare Theatre presents Othello, now through March 16th.  Get the Groupon here.

In other Shakespeare news, Richard III's remains were found underneath a parking lot. I'm not making this up--it's in The Times.

Episode 34 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is here!

On this week’s show, I talk Shakespeare with Stephen Burdman, the artistic director of New York Classical Theatre,

Plus Bronte Bettencourt talks about Lestat.

Texts Discussed:

Notes

Laurence Olivier's screenplay adaptation of his never-filmed Macbeth has been found, according to The Guardian.

Barnes and Noble will be closing 20 stores a year for the next decade, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Episode 33 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is available on iTunes, or right here for download.

On this week’s show, I interview noted reviewer Chauncey Mabe,

Plus Adam Soldolfsky reads from Panorama-orama.

Notes

Chauncey Mabe's now defunct but still evergreen blog for the Florida Center for the Literary Arts.

Amazon cannot underprice books in France, as reported in The New York Times.

Books and Books, the best independent in South Florida.

Orlando Cultural Events

This week, the Zora Neale Hurston Festival is underway.

Attend The Drunken Odyssey's Evening of Erotic Poetry on February 8th.

Throughout February, Rollins College will be hosting its annual author series, Winter with the Writers.

Orlando Shakespeare Theatre presents Othello, now through March 16th.

Episode 33 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is available on iTunes, or right here for download.

Episode 32 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing, literature, and drinking, is now available.

On this week’s show, I interview novelist Terry Cronin,

And Jean Davis offers one amazing essay about Write is a Verb.

Texts Discussed

Notes

Susan Lilley will be reading from her new book of poems, Satellite Beach, on Thursday, January 24th, at Rollins College.  For more info, click here.

Show contributor Alise Hamilton (episode 7) discusses bingers and plodders, and the merits of the former as writers, at Bill and Dave's Cocktail Hour.

A history of the Coppertone sign.

On this week's show, I interview novelist Grant Ginder,

Plus Tim J. Myers discusses Maurice Sendak's Where the Wild Things Are,

Texts Discussed

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