New KTCO: Jennifer Baker
Jennifer Baker has been one of the people I've looked up to for a while as a model of literary citizenship, so when I heard that she had a YA novel coming out, I immediately pre-ordered it. Forgive Me Not is a powerful and insightful book about the American carceral system, as well as a moving coming-of-age and family story.
The story follows Violetta Chen-Samuels, a high school student in New York City whose life has gone off the rails, culminating in the death of her younger sister in a drunk driving accident that Violetta caused. In this version of New York, juvenile offenders are given the option of enduring Trials—a sort of codified form of "tough love"—instead of incarceration. But despite being intended as a reform of the criminal justice system, the Trials, too, are harsh and retributive. Forgive Me Not delves into the harms of our carceral system, and how race, class, gender, and other systems of marginalization interact with it, and ultimately the question of forgiveness and punishment.
Jennifer and I had a great conversation about how she approached writing her characters, why it was important for her to focus on systems rather than individual guilt or innocence, and how to write about serious topics for younger readers.
New KTCO: Amanda Marchand
I had the pleasure of being in the audience for Amanda Marchand's Second Sight lecture at this year's Medium Festival, back in May. I was, of course, immediately struck by the simple and elegant compositions of her lumen prints (an example of which is shown above—her image "Roseate Tern"), but it was her process that truly fascinated me. I'm always interested in the separation between what can and can't be seen in a photographic image, and in her Lumen Notebook series, Amanda mostly uses books to create the photograms. And not just any books, but specific books that have specific meaning to her. It turns out that both she and I have a fascination with the way that language and image interact, so it was a real treat getting to pick her brain for this episode.
Here are some handy links for the episode:
In the course of our conversation, we mentioned several of Amanda's books, which you can purchase:
- The World is Astonishing with You in It (2021, self-published, contact artist to purchase: amandabethmarchand@gmail.com)
- Nothing Will Ever Be the Same Again (2019, Datz Press)
- Night Garden (2015, Datz Press)
Some additional resources you may enjoy in conjunction with today's episode:
- Amanda's Medium Festival lecture is a great overview of her work and process.
New KTCO: Sarah Hollowell
I have been a big fan of Sarah Hollowell both as a writer and as a person for many years now. She's one of my favorite presences on Twitter and with the publication of her debut novel, A Dark and Starless Forest, she's become one of my favorite YA writers as well.
There's a lot that I love about the book. Sarah excels at creating an atmosphere of magic that is full of wonder while also feeling eerie and dangerous. In terms of representation, this book also features a fat protagonist as well as queer characters, which I very much appreciate in a YA novel. Mostly, though, it's just a well-paced and extremely satisfying story.
In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about her writing process, about abuse dynamics, about fan fiction, and about how she engaged with anger and violence in A Dark and Starless Forest. In the second segment, we talked about the Alpha Young Writers Workshop, how it was such a formative experience for her and why she loves working with teens. I hope you enjoy the episode!
Here are some handy episode links:
And some purchase links for the book! As always, I recommend picking it up from your local independent bookstore, but if you don't have one of those available, here are some other options:
Some additional resources that you might enjoy in conjunction with today's episode:
- Sarah's short story "Crow's Eye" was featured in episode 2 of LikeWise Fiction. It's a great example of her short fiction and has a very similar style to A Dark and Starless Forest.
New KTCO: Ayesha Raees
When I first started reading Ayesha Raees's debut book of poetry, Coining a Wishing Tower, I had a certain feeling of being unmoored. The form of the book (fragments that might be fable or might be prose poetry) and the tone (which varied between the fragments, some strange and Borgesian, others quite concrete) all contributed to that. But the further in I got, the more it began to cohere into an experience that, if I couldn't fully articulate what it was doing or how, was nevertheless potent and resonant. What was clear at that point was that this was a book that I'd need to return to more than once, and which would reward me if I did with new insights. That turned out to be entirely true, and I discovered threads about loss, about grief, about religion and ritual, about belonging and separation, and of a certain optimism in the face of devastation. Needless to say, I was pleased to get to talk with Ayesha for this week's episode.
Here are some handy episode links:
And some purchase links for the book! As always, I recommend picking it up from your local independent bookstore, but if you don't have one of those available, here are some other options:
Some additional resources that you might enjoy in conjunction with today's episode:
- This interview at CutBank between Ayesha and Josh Wagner was an interesting starting point for me in thinking about how I wanted to approach my conversation with her.
- Ayesha's Vimeo page has a number of examples of her hybrid work, combining image, text, and sound for a fascinating artistic experience. I particularly recommend her four-part video "A Manual (or memoir), For Learning (or knowing), About a Tentative (or fleeting), Ticking thought Machine (or being)."
New KTCO: Anahid Nersessian
I tend not to read a whole lot of nonfiction books—for the most part, if I'm going to read criticism then I tend to read it as separate essays, and usually online. But Anahid Nersessian's Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse was such an edifying and resonant experience to read. Not only did she teach me a lot about a set of poems that I hadn't thought about in years—John Keats's Great Odes—but moving through the essays in this book is a personal narrative about a relationship that, although oblique, I found both emotionally moving and intellectually fascinating, particularly in how that personal narrative functions with the more straightforward critical portions. I really enjoyed having this conversation with Anahid, and I hope you enjoy it, too.
Here are some handy episode links:
And some purchase links for the book! As always, I recommend picking it up from your local independent bookstore, but if you don't have one of those available, here are some other options:
Some additional resources that you might find interesting in conjunction with this conversation:
- Anahid has a new piece out in the New York Review of Books, titled "Catastrophic Desire," which is about the Iranian poet Forough Farrokhzad.
- This conversation between Anahid and her friend, the actor Zoe Kazan, about the book was one of the first sources I checked out to help shape this conversation, and I thought it was pretty enlightening.
- Similarly, this conversation between Anahid and Michael Robbins was very useful.
- I also very much enjoyed reading Anahid's NYRB piece "Love for Sale," about Eva Illouz’s The End of Love. Reading someone's critical work, I find, always gives an interesting perspective into how they think.
Happy listening!
New KTCO: KTCO Book Club - Piranesi (with Maggie Tokuda-Hall)
For our first KTCO Book Club episode of the year I'm joined by writer and podcaster Maggie Tokuda-Hall to discuss Susanna Clarke's novel Piranesi! I was a huge fan of Clarke's first novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and had been meaning to read Piranesi since it first came out, so I was delighted that Maggie picked it for our conversation.
Here are some handy episode links:
And some purchase links for the book! As always, I recommend picking it up from your local independent bookstore, but if you don't have one of those available, here are some other options:
Finally, a few other tidbits you might find interesting in association with this episode:
- You can find information about all of Maggie's books at her website, prettyokmaggie.com.
- Maggie's podcast Failure to Adapt with comedian Red Scott is a hilarious show about stories that have been adapted from one form to another. If you’re looking for a place to start, I’d suggest either the first episode—the Twilight episode with guest Sarah Gailey—or the recent Princess Bride episode with guest Chris Sarandon.
- I read a whole bunch of reviews of Piranesi in preparation for this conversation, and the one that stood out to me the most for its depth and insight was Abigail Nussbaum's review for her blog Asking the Wrong Questions.
Happy listening!
New KTCO: Yanyi
We're back! For our first episode of 2022, I'm talking with poet Yanyi. There’s a way in which the end of a serious relationship can shake your entire concept of yourself, and through your grief you have to find yourself again. Yanyi’s latest book of poems, Dream of the Divided Field, braids poems about heartbreak and implied emotional violence with poems about transition and immigration. Each has a similar but distinct sense of a loss of self, a search for self, a yearning for connection and belonging, a sometimes violent disconnection—to a partner, to a place or culture, to oneself and one’s own body. In our conversation, Yanyi and I discussed his book, deconstruction and reconstruction, attachment to nuance, and the relationship between beauty and violence. Then for the second segment, we talked about grief.
Here are some links where you can listen to the episode:
You can also listen to the full episode and find show notes and a transcript at the episode page on the KTCO website.
Toward the end of the first segment, Yanyi and I talked about the ways that Dream of the Divided Field is different from his first book, The Year of Blue Water. If you'd like to hear more about that book, check out our first conversation from back in 2019.
Dream of the Divided Field is available for purchase now and you can find it wherever books are sold. As always, I encourage you to purchase a copy from an independent bookstore, like The Book Catapult here in San Diego.
#MatteredToMe - January 14, 2022
- The single exclamation point in Mary Oliver's poem "I Know Someone."
- There is this longing, I think, in Tami Haaland's poem "Not Scientifically Verifiable" about the separation between people. It's very sexy, too, I thought.
- The way that Lisa Rhoades's captures the ephemeral moment of childhood in her poem "The Long Grass."
- The last couplet, especially, of Rebecca Foust's poem "and for a time we lived."
- Finally, Lyz Lenz's recent newsletter "Taking a Vacation at the End of the World": "It’s all grief. It’s some joy. And baby, I only know one way into the abyss and that’s head first."
As always, this is just a portion of what has mattered to me recently. Things are difficult and scary right now, I know. I'm doing my best to hold onto the ones I love, and to let go of what I need to let go of, and what needs me to let go of it.
Thanks, and take care.
#MatteredToMe - February 4, 2022
- The shadows and the softness of light in Lisa Sorgini's "Behind Glass" portrait series, reminiscent of Caravaggio, drew me in first. The sense of both isolation and connection, and the way it highlights the primacy of motherhood in this moment of history made me stay and look longer.
- I lost my paternal grandmother last year, the matriarch of our family and the one from whom I learned about the Japanese American internment. So reading Maggie Tokuda-Hall's piece "Knowing Tama," seeing her grapple with what she can and can't know about her grandmother, was particularly poignant for me.
- I love how attentive to the world Ada Limón's poems are, how open they are to what the world shows us, and how that openness can shake us out of interiority and make us bigger. Her poem "It's the Season I Often Mistake" felt like that.
- I love how Gabrielle Bates' poem "Compassionate Withdrawal" seems to breathe, inhaling in preparation, hinging on a moment of blunt clarity, and then exhaling back into feeling.
- I was absolutely delighted to see Ross Sutherland's podcast Imaginary Advice come back this week, and the first new episode (part 1 of a short series) is a spot-on and hilarious take on a Guy-Ritchie-style heist movie.
- I loved how enthusiastic both Helena de Groot and Kaveh Akbar were in their recent conversation on Poetry Off the Shelf. And I loved the way Akbar talked about learning from his spouse how to look at the world as it is.
- Finally, my son and I finished watching the slice-of-life anime School Babysitters last night. It was exactly the combination of heartwarming, wholesome, and hilarious that I needed right now.
As always, this is just a portion of what has mattered to me recently. I've gotten to spend a lot of time with my kids lately, and I'm grateful for it. I hope you have people in your life, too, for whom you're grateful.
Thank you, and take care.
#MatteredToMe - January 21, 2022
- Luisa Muradyan's poem "Quoting the Bible" turns twice, and the middle portion has this franticness that I recognized and which drew me in. But it's the ending I'm continuing to mull over.
- Carl Phillips's poem "Is It True All Legends Once Were Rumors" feels apocalyptic to me, appropriately so. I think I've read it ten or fifteen times in the past couple of weeks.
- Finally, I was recently introduced (via TikTok) to Nickel Creek's song "Can't Complain," from their 2005 album Why Should the Fire Die? What a gut punch of a song about an intense and deeply toxic relationship.
As always, this is just a portion of what has mattered to me recently. I hope you have someone to take care of you, even if it's just yourself. I know you're doing your best, and so am I.
Take care.