John speaks with his friend Jason about the creative joys of grieving and the power of earnestness and other matters of interest.

The poet and memoirist Lynn Melnick talks with me about the cleverness and heart of Dolly Parton, who can serve as more than a cultural icon as we try to discover how to make our unique ways in the world.

Rochelle Hurt interviews Julia Koets about romantic desire and loss, the villanelle form, the layouts of poetry volumes, growing up with the policing of restrictive gender norms, how research contributes to creativity, the linguistic surprises lurking in the mundane world.

On this week’s program, I talk to the poet and novelist Chrissy Kolaya about the creative process, psychology, and the multitudinous tensions of being an American.

Robert Pinsky discusses his memoir Jersey Breaks, and John and Mr. Pinksy compare some psychogeographic notes, as well as bragging rights.

On this week’s program, I talk to Chelsea Alice about Salman Rushdie’s playful parable from 2020, “The Old Man in the Piazza,” published in The New Yorker, plus I share Salman Rushdie’s 2017 event from Miami Book Fair, in which he reads from his novel, The Golden House.

On this week's show, I talk to the fiction writer and former memoirist Jonathan Ames.

On today's show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss a wild, strange, deadpan, homicidal roadtrip story that is The Doom Generation.

Jeff Shuster & John King discuss the 1993 anthology horror film, Body Bags, starring an excitable John Carpenter.

On this week’s show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss the 1992 Peter Jackson masterpiece of a family drama, Dead Alive.

On #546, Jeff Shuster and I discuss the strange 1991 masterpiece from France that is Delicatessen.

On this week’s show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss the belated masterpiece that is the director's cut of Clive Barker's Nightbreed.

This week, I speak with my friend and colleague Ryan Rivas about his exciting, new, experimental memoir, Nextdoor in Colonialtown.

This week, my colleagues Christopher Odom, Bethany Duvall, Jared Silvia, and I sling writing advice from Full Sail University's Fifth Annual Creative Writing Conference.

This week, Samantha Nickerson speaks with novelist Marie Myung-Ok Lee about the musicality of novel-writing, and discovering the shape a novel requires despite one's intentions.

This week, I talk with historian and biographer Mark Braude about artist, model, and cabaret singer Kiki Man Ray and the art life in Paris in the 1920s.

This week, I catch up with longtime friend of the show, the brilliant creative nonfiction writer, Chelsey Clammer.

This week, the brilliant Chelsea Alice & I discuss John Bois's postmodern masterpiece, "17776," which is partially about what football will look like in the time of the singularity. Probably no other fiction has made such utility out of the resources and mechanics of the internet for a reading experience.

On #537, I speak with the writer, publisher, and podcaster Michael Wheaton

This week, I speak with nonfiction writer Nona Willis Aronowitz about sex and feminism and other matters.

This week, Rachael Tillman and I discuss Azar Nafisi's Reading Lolita in Tehran, a long overdue read for both of us.

This week, I speak with Rachel Kolman about her immersion in creative non-fiction and her writing life after her UCF MFA.

This week, I speak with my occasional co-host, Rachel Tillman about Don Marquis's Archy & Mehitabel, a series of narrative poems written by a cockroach.

This week, I speak with literary biographer Miranda Seymour about the extraordinary career of Jean Rhys.

This week, I am happy to present a bootleg edition of the Loose Lips reading series, hosted by Dianne Turgeon Richardson and Tod Caviness, with readings by Rachel Kolman, Samantha Nickerson, moi, Holly Tavel, and Brian Crimmins.

On this episode, I speak with Disney historian Jamie Hecker about the relationship Walt Disney and the Disney Company have had with Washington D.C.

On #529, I speak with fiction writer Kathryn Harlan about her debut collection, Fruiting Bodies.

On #528, Rachel Tillman and I discuss Conversations with Friends, Sally Rooney's debut novel.

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On #526 I talk to poet Rochelle Hurt about her latest book, The J Girls: A Reality Show.

On #525, I talk to Brynne Rebele-Henry about divinity, sexuality, and historical imagination in her extraordinary latest collection of verse, Prelude.

On #524, I talk to Yeoh Jo-Ann, the spring 2022 resident of the Kerouac Project of Orlando, about her novel, Impractical Uses of Cake, proper otter behavior, the role of agency in happiness, cat envy, teaching Shakespeare to teenagers, and the small ways teachers entertain themselves every day.

In this week’s episode, I talk to Aaron Angello about his new book, The Fact of Memory: 114 Ruminations and Fabrications, the creative benefits of daily ritual, writing (cough) early in the morning, David Lynch, the mysteries of the word and, and ditching academic rules for the Muses.

In this week’s episode, I talk to Ann Hood about the challenges of writing nonfiction, the intertwining of feminism and women’s rights and the history of aviation before and after deregulation, the value of non-writing jobs for young writers, and so much more.

In this week’s show, I speak with the creative nonfiction writer Nita Noveno about the Peace Corps, having a writing community, the Kerouac House, gators, gators, and more gators, and bears, and all of Florida’s wild charms, including the people.

In this week’s show, I speak with Rachael Tillman about the poetry and practice of Anne Sexton.

In this week’s show, I speak with the poet Marisa Siegel about the value of combining poetry with graphic art, language poetry, discovering poetry early in life, and the Mills College MFA Program in Oakland.

In this week’s show, I speak with the poet Vidhu Aggarwal about humor in poetry, the physicality of laughter, symbology, physics and spirituality, The Mahabharata, Samuel Beckett, and Shakespeare.

In this week’s show, I speak with the poet Kimberly Ann Priest about purposeful ambiguity in poetry and the minor disturbing oddities in Hieronymus Bosch.

 

On #516 Rachel Tillman and I discuss the novels of Sally Rooney.

On #515, I talk to Sara Manning Peskin about the history of the mysteries and discoveries of medical science.

In this week’s show, I talk to Laura Costas about the pleasures of disorientation, the surprises of actual history, the complexity of myth, and postmodernism.

In #513, I talk to Jane-Rebecca Cannarella about genre bending & blending, illustrating literature, and the dialectics of Disney's The Little Mermaid.

In this week’s show, I talk to Lan Samantha Chan about writing a novel over a long period of time, learning and teaching at the Iowa Writers Workshop, the value of writing communities, and balancing teaching, administrative work, and writing.

On today’s show, I talk to TDO's comic book blogger Drew Barth to discuss Walt Simonson's astounding mythical, iconoclastic run on Thorback in the 1980s.

Sandra Lim talks about optimism, editing through the pile of a poem, letting oneself go in the current of the stream, and finding a grounding in the abstractions of mind and word.

On today’s show, co-novelists Laura Blackett and Eve Gleichman talk about corporate cults, collaborative writing, and satire.

Memoirist Sonya Huber discusses how to write the way that we think, including the semiotic leapfrogs of memory, and trying to depict the precarious balance of reality.

On #506, Shruti Swarmy talks about calling the reader into a complete, already alive imaginary world, and writing about dance in ways that transcend rational, orderly prose.

On today’s show, I speak with the memoirist Brian Broome, winner of the 2021 Kirkus Prize for nonfiction.

Photo by Annie O'Neill

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On today’s show, I speak with fiction writer Zaina Arafat about love, identity, sarcasm, and their complications for storytelling.