New LikeWise Fiction: "The Friend," by Lindsay Hatton
Episode 6 of LikeWise Fiction features "The Friend," by Lindsay Hatton. In this story, a WWI veteran comes to the Big Sur coast to oversee the construction of an iconic bridge, and strikes up an unlikely friendship with an unusual stranger.
Listen to the story at:
You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.
Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with Lindsay Hatton. In our conversation, Lindsay and I talked about her fascination with masculinity and male interactions, the haunted quality of the Northern California coastline, and the relationship between humanity and landscape in "The Friend."
New LikeWise Fiction: "Spirit of Home," by José Pablo Iriarte
Episode 5 of LikeWise Fiction features "Spirit of Home," by José Pablo Iriarte. In this story, a migrant father and daughter on Mars are brought together by a taste of home.
Listen to the story at:
You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.
New LikeWise Fiction: "The Best Light Fades," by Rachel Lyon
Episode 4 of LikeWise Fiction features "The Best Light Fades," by Rachel Lyon. In this story, a young writer struggles to find her voice and get her artistic career started, all while having to care for her aging father and her literal clown of a boyfriend.
Listen to the story at:
You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.
Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with Rachel Lyon. In our conversation, Rachel and I talked about the characters' relationship to art, and how this story was sort of a prototype for her novel, Self-Portrait with Boy.
New LikeWise Fiction: "Crow's Eye," by Sarah Hollowell
Episode 3 of LikeWise Fiction features "Crow's Eye," by Sarah Hollowell.
“Her entire life, Ruby has known that something lives in the lake. She’s never seen it, but she’s felt its fingers brush her ankle. She’s felt its gaze.”
Listen to the story at:
You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.
Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with Sarah Hollowell. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about sibling relationships in fantasy stories, fat representation, and the responsibility necessary when writing outside of your experience.
New LikeWise Fiction: "How to Be Chinese," by Celeste Ng
Episode 2 of LikeWise Fiction features the story "How to Be Chinese," by Celeste Ng. In this story, Mackenzie is a Chinese American adoptee who has grown up with a white mother in a Michigan town with few other Asians. As she goes off to college, she's excited to explore and connect with her heritage, but finds the question of identity to be complicated.
Listen to the story at:
You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.
Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with Celeste Ng. In our conversation, Celeste and I talked about the relationship between this story and her novels, and the complicated question of what heritage and culture mean for us as Asian Americans.
Launching LikeWise Fiction!
Episode 1 of LikeWise Fiction is finally here! In this inaugural episode I'm reading Alvin Park's story "Whale Fall." In this beautiful flash fiction piece, a whale washes ashore, a village loses its memories, and a relationship falls apart.
Listen to the story at:
You can also listen to the full episode and read the story text at the episode page on the LikeWise Fiction website.
Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign at the $5 level and above can hear my special bonus interview with the author of today's story, Alvin Park. In our conversation, Alvin and I discussed the flash fiction form and why he's attracted to it as a writer, and what it means to be a "hyphenated American" writer.
New KTCO: Ashly Stohl
It's funny, so often I find myself going to an artist's or author's website and getting irritated that there are no recent updates about their work, no news about new publications, no links to interviews or press coverage. These are things that I am always looking for when I'm doing research for an upcoming podcast episode or even when I just want to do a deep dive into the archive of an artist I admire. And yet, of course, on my own website the blog languishes for months at a time with nary a whisper of the things I've been up to. Presumably, if you're bothering to look at my website, you'd want to know what I'm doing, yes? So I'm going to try to commit to more regular updates.
Speaking of which, there's a new episode of Keep the Channel Open up today, featuring my conversation with photographer Ashly Stohl! I've long admired Ashly's work and not only because we both make images of our families—she brings a visual aesthetic to the genre that I don't often see, more influenced by street and documentary photography than by portraiture. And humor! So often that's missing from personal work, or just art in general. We talked about her books Charth Vader and The Days & Years, about artistic collaborations, about how to sequence a photo series, and about the difference between New York and LA. I hope you enjoy it!