699: Aymann Ismail!

On this week's program, I talk to Mamie Pound about how flash fiction works, poetry, and finding the authentic, messy, true emotion and understanding despite the editors in our brains.

On this week's program, I talk to Elliot Ackerman about his new novel, Sheepdogs, a hell of a military caper story.

Happy Valentine's Day, world! Listen to Dianne Turgeon Richardson and I discuss the memorable, occasionally exhausting, and morally iffy smut of Anaïs Nin's Delta of Venus.

After reading some of Charlotte Brontë's Tales of Angria (#682), John and Sophia go a-Brontë-ing again. They discuss Lucasta Miller's extraordinary survey of the Brontë cult and the durable, troubled legacy of their fiction.

In this week's show, I speak with the comedian Greg Proops about comedy writing, comedy performance, improv, politics, film, and more.

On #700, John speaks with the underrated novelist and essay writer Chuck Klosterman about his wickedly funny and ever-insightful new book called Football. They also speak about post-modernism and humor and how audiences perplexingly invert their expectations about reality when reading fiction and non-fiction. John perhaps goes on a rant about the 1985 New England loss in the Super Bowl.

On this episode, Samantha Nickerson interviews the journalist and memoirist about his new book, Becoming Baba: Fatherhood, Faith, and Finding Meaning in America.

On this episode, John interviews the rock band Descartes a Kant about the creation of exciting twenty-first century theatrical rock and roll. Listen to & buy DAK's music over at Band Camp.

Here John speaks with his friend Todd James Pierce about his research process, his work on Disney artist Mary Blair, and Todd's wonderful new book, Making Mary Poppins, now out with Norton.

On this show, John and Matt Peters continue The Kerouac Project Book Club with a discussion of William S. Burrough's third fiction manuscript, Interzone, the cliff before one arrives at Naked Lunch.