662: Rufi Thorpe & Susan Minot (Interviewed by Samantha Nickerson)

In honor of the passing of David Lynch, John and Stephen McClurg discuss the peculiar mysteries of a screenplay for a legendary project that was never made, Ronnie Rocket.

In this week's show, John speaks with Jaydra Johnson about her new book, Low: Notes on Art and Trash, and the tensions and connections between class perception, politics, and creation of art.

On today’s show, I speak with the poet and editor Rigoberto Gonzales about the curation of the Library of America anthology of Latino Poetry. Then Richard Blanco reads "Como Tú," his poem that is collected in that anthology, and he and I catch up a little bit.

0On #633, Rachael Tillman and I discuss the surreal paradoxes and sullen joys of Bill Knott's debut collection of poetry, The Naomi Poems: Corpse and Beans, which was recently reprinted by Black Ocean Press.

On today’s episode, Samantha Nickerson speaks with fiction writer Rufi Thorpe about her striking novel Margo's Got Money Problems. In this episode, you learn about more than just Margo's money problems. Samantha and Rufi discuss Only Fans, wrestling, creating characters, and motherhood’s thorny identity. Samantha then speaks to Susan My-Nutt about erotic obsession, alienation, hyper-thinking, and the presentation of dialogue without quotation marks as they appear in her new novel, Don’t Be a Stranger.

In this episode, John interviews the notable flash fiction writer Kathy Fish about the anxious nuances of that medium and genre. Is flash fiction just a very short story, with all the rules of fiction at work? Or is flash fiction a less traditional, immersive fictional happening that takes somewhere between the length of a flash of lightning and the length of time needed to smoke a cigarette? The complicated answer is yes and yes in this delightful conversation recorded at The Kerouac Project of Orlando.

In this episode, John discusses the career of crime novelist John D. MacDonald (1916-1986) in light of a new posthumous short story, “The Accomplice.” In this interview, John speaks with with Andrew Gulli, editor of The Strand Magazineabout the rigors and ethos of editing and publishing and MacDonald’s son and literary executor Maynard about propagating a great writer’s legacy without compromising that writer’s standards despite the lucrative promise of a classic literary character like Travis McGee.

In 659, John talks to poet Duy Đoàn about his latest collection, Zombie Vomit Mad Libs, the poetic provocations of horror films, and experimenting with erasure and fragmentation.

In this week’s replay episode, John talks with fellow classmate, the fiction writer Kseniya Melnik.

In this week's show, John talks to the delightful poet Denise Duhamel about the nuts and bolts of poetry, the construction of themed collections, Barbie, and other matters of literary interest.