Ecstasy, Ruin, & the Talent of the Room w/ Kathe Koja

In this interview, we chat with Kathe Koja about balancing simultaneous projects, resisting online distractions, raising the literary dead, and so much more. Kathe Koja writes novels and short fiction, and creates and produces live and virtual events. Her award-winning books include The Cipher, Skin, Buddha Boy, Under The Poppy and Velocities, and she is currently at work on the Dark Factory immersive fiction project including Dark Factory, Dark Park and Dark Matter. Catherine the Ghost is her newest novel. You can find her at kathekoja.com and on Instagram, Facebook and Threads. Books and plays mentioned in this episode:  Wuthering Heights – Emily Brontë Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin Faust – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe The Mouse and His Child; Riddley Walker – Russell Hoban The Default World – Naomi Kanakia A Place of Greater Safety; Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel Doctor Faustus – Christopher Marlowe Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett – James Knowlson Rimbaud: A Biography – Graham Robb Frankenstein; The Last Man – Mary Shelley Lost Boy Lost Girl – Peter Straub The Secret Power of Music: The Transformation of Self and Society through Musical Energy – David Tame

In this interview, we chat with Paula D. Ashe about writer's block, narrative movement, urban legends, and so much more. Paula D. Ashe (she/her) is an author of dark fiction. Her debut collection We Are Here to Hurt Each Other (Nictitating Books) was a Shirley Jackson Award winner for Single Author Collection and a Bram Stoker Award Finalist for Superior Achievement in a Fiction Collection. Recently, she received the Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Weird Fiction Award at NecronomiCon Providence. Paula was also an associate editor for Vastarien: A Literary Journal. She lives in the Midwest with her family. Books and stories mentioned in this episode:  Supplication – Nour Abi-Nakhoul The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood Books of Blood; The Damnation Game; The Hellbound Heart – Clive Barker Midnight Rooms – Donyae Coles Blood from the Air – Gemma Files “each thing i show you is a piece of my death” – Gemma Files & Stephen J. Barringer Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke – Eric LaRocca “Abed” – Elizabeth Massie The Scar – China Miéville Beloved; The Bluest Eye – Toni Morrison Song of the Tyrant Worm – Hailey Piper Flowers for the Sea – Zin E. Rocklyn Cows – Matthew Stokoe The Secret History – Donna Tartt The Color Purple – Alice Walker Where I End – Sophie White

In this interview, we chat with McKenna James Boeckner and Carlee Calver about nature writing, epistolary possibilities, elusive chicken detectives, and so much more. McKenna James Boeckner is a Ph.D. candidate and contract lecturer at the University of New Brunswick (territory of the Wolastoqiyik people), with a specialization in long eighteenth-century British literature. As a creative writer, they slay with playwriting and have a penchant for fractured states of reality. Their most recent project is an eco-horror audio drama co-created with Carlee Calver, titled Us Soliscent Seeds. Find more of their work at memoirsofasodomite.com Carlee Calver is a writer, playwright, and filmmaker from Bathurst, New Brunswick. She currently lives and works in Fredericton NB, where she received her M.A. in creative writing (screenwriting) from the University of New Brunswick. Her plays have been produced by Notable Acts Theatre Festival (2019) and Herbert the Cow productions (2022). She directed a FibeTV1 series called Skin and Bone (2023) that is now available online. Recently, Carlee was co-creator and producer of Us Soliscent Seeds (2023), a 4-part eco-horror audio drama set in Northern New Brunswick. All episodes are now available for streaming online. Books mentioned in this episode: We Are Here to Hurt Each Other – Paula D. Ashe Carrie – Stephen King Blue Ruin; Red Pill – Hari Kunzru Melmoth the Wanderer – Charles Maturin The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath Divergent series – Veronica Roth The Two Gentlemen of Verona – William Shakespeare Frankenstein – Mary Shelley Dracula – Bram Stoker

In this interview, we chat with Lisa Tuttle about genre history, the ideal protagonist, Harlan Ellison's writing advice, and so much more. Lisa Tuttle was born and raised in Austin, Texas, and moved to Britain in the 1980s. Her first novel, Windhaven, co-written with George R.R. Martin, was followed by over a dozen fantasy, science fiction, and horror novels, including three recent books set in the 1890s combining crime and supernatural fiction, featuring the detective duo Jasper Jesperson and Miss Lane; the third volume, The Curious Affair of the Missing Mummies, was published last year. She has also written hundreds of award-winning short stories collected in several volumes, including A Nest of Nightmares, The Dead Hours of the Night, and most recently, Riding the Nightmare. She is the author of The Encyclopedia of Feminism (1986) and currently writes a monthly science fiction review column for The Guardian. She lives with her husband and their daughter in Scotland. Book and stories mentioned in this episode: The Saint of Bright Doors – Vajra Chandrasekera Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin Hangsaman; The Haunting of Hill House; “The Lottery” – Shirley Jackson The MANIAC; When We Cease to Understand the World – Benjamín Labatut Biography of X – Catherine Lacey The Seventh Mansion – Maryse Meijer Babysitter; By the North Gate; They; The Wheel of Love – Joyce Carol Oates The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath Lake of Darkness – Adam Roberts Cryptonomicon; Polostan – Neal Stephenson

In this interview, we chat with Mark Anthony Jarman about hockey fiction, deadwood words, finding inspiration in newspaper clippings, and so much more. Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Touch Anywhere to Begin, Czech Techno, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, My White Planet, 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. Burn Man, published in 2023 by Biblioasis, was an Editors Choice with the New York Times. He was an acquisitions editor for Oberon Press, and introduced many new writers through the Coming Attractions series. He is also the editor of Best Canadian Stories 2023. His novel Salvage King Ya! is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey fiction. Widely published in Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia, Jarman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the University of New Brunswick. He is also co-editor of the literary journal CAMEL. Books and poems mentioned in this episode:  Flowers of Evil – Charles Baudelaire Study for Obedience – Sarah Bernstein Cathedral – Raymond Carver The Stories of John Cheever – John Cheever Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad The U.S.A. Trilogy – Jon Dos Passos Literary Theory: An Introduction – Terry Eagleton “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” – T. S. Eliot The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald Attack of the Copula Spiders: Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover The Sun Also Rises – Ernest Hemingway Dubliners; Ulysses – James Joyce The Incognito Lounge and Other Poems; Jesus’ Son; Seek: Reports from the Edges of America & Beyond – Denis Johnson On the Road – Jack Kerouac Panama – Thomas McGuane Dance of the Happy Shades – Alice Munro Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle; Lolita; Pale Fire – Vladimir Nabokov The Cariboo Horses – Al Purdy

In this interview, we chat with Maryse Meijer about metaphor, quotation marks, the dubious necessity of author photos, and so much more. Maryse Meijer is the author of Heartbreaker, Rag, Northwood, and The Seventh Mansion. She lives in Chicago. Books and stories mentioned in this episode: Samuel Beckett: A Biography – Deirdre Bair Waiting for Godot – Samuel Beckett About Schmidt – Louis Begley Autobiography of Red – Anne Carson New Grub Street – George Gissing The Children of the Dead; Greed; The Piano Teacher – Elfriede Jelinek Pet Sematary – Stephen King Bad Brains; The Cipher; Kink; Skin; Strange Angels – Kathe Koja The Communicating Vessels – Friederike Mayröcker  All the Pretty Horses – Cormac McCarthy Hurricane Season; Paradais – Fernanda Melchor The Defense; Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov Black Water; Blonde; Heat; My Sister, My Love; “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?”; Zombie – Joyce Carol Oates With the Animals – Noëlle Revaz Snake Eyes – Rosamond Smith The Custom of the Country – Edith Wharton Maryse's featured author photo is by Lewis McVey. The discussed image of St. Pancratius can be viewed here.

In this interview, we chat with Craig Laurance Gidney about genre mashups, writing workshops, telling Mom which of your stories to avoid, and so much more. Craig Laurance Gidney (he/him/his) is the author of Sea, Swallow Me & Other Stories; Skin Deep Magic: Stories; Bereft (a YA novella); and A Spectral Hue (a novel). He has been a Lambda Literary Finalist three times, was a Carl Brandon Parallax Award Finalist, and won the inaugural Joseph S. Pulver Sr. Award for Weird Fiction. The Nectar of Nightmares is his most recent collection. He lives in Washington, D.C. Books and stories mentioned in this episode: The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood Giovanni’s Room; Go Tell It on the Mountain; If Beale Street Could Talk  – James Baldwin Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell; Piranesi – Susanna Clarke Dhalgren – Samuel R. Delany The Corrections – Jonathan Franzen The Uncanny – Sigmund Freud A Ring of Endless Light; A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L'Engle Black Light – Elizabeth Hand The Complete Tales of Uncle Remus – Joel Chandler Harris “The Golden Pot”; “The Sandman” – E. T. A. Hoffmann Finnegan’s Wake – James Joyce “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk” – Franz Kafka Delirium’s Mistress – Tanith Lee “The Outsider”; “The Rats in the Walls” – H.P. Lovecraft The Winds of Winter – George R. R. Martin The Starless Sea – Erin Morgenstern Tar Baby – Toni Morrison “A Good Man is Hard to Find” – Flannery O’Connor Corpsepaint – David Peak Queen of Teeth – Hailey Piper

In this interview, we chat with Niall Howell about crime fiction, creative spontaneity, the magic of public swimming pools, and so much more. Niall Howell lives in Calgary, Alberta with his wife, sons, and pets. His debut noir novel Only Pretty Damned was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction. His follow-up novel, There Are Wolves Here Too, was shortlisted by the Book Publisher's Association of Alberta for Mystery and Thriller book of the year. Niall's short fiction has been featured in The Feathertale Review and FreeFall. He is currently working on his third novel.  Books and stories mentioned in this episode: City of Margins; Shoot the Moonlight Out – William Boyle  Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody  Selected Letters of Raymond Chandler – Raymond Chandler; edited by Frank MacShane  The Guest – Emma Cline  Perfidia; This Storm; Widespread Panic – James Ellroy  Our Share of Night – Mariana Enriquez  The Wars – Timothy Findley  The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald  A Rage in Harlem – Chester Himes  It; Night Shift; Salem’s Lot – Stephen King  Burnt Offerings – Robert Marasco  Moby Dick – Herman Melville  Peyton Place – Grace Metalious  Devil in a Blue Dress – Walter Mosley  Toby Tyler; or, Ten Weeks with a Circus – James Otis  “The Black Cat” – Edgar Allan Poe  The House Next Door –  Anne Rivers Siddons The Secret History – Donna Tartt

In this interview, we chat with Phoebe Marmura about fear, fairies, set design, and so much more. ⁠Phoebe Marmura⁠ is a writer and artist. Her work explores desire, femininity, domestic adventure, and reclusion. Marmura’s writing can be found in Expat Press, D.F.L. Lit, and Orca Literary Journal. Books mentioned in this episode: Erotic Interludes: Tales Told by Women – Lonnie Barbach Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs On the Road – Jack Kerouac Biography of X – Catherine Lacey Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott The Heart is a Lonely Hunter – Carson McCullers Story – Robert McKee Portrait of Jennie – Robert Nathan Junie B. Jones series – Barbara Park The Golden Compass – Philip Pullman Pretty Little Liars series – Sara Shepard Charlotte's Web – E. B. White

In this interview, we chat with Lindsay Lerman about philosophy, procedural knowledge, writing dialogue, and so much more. Lindsay Lerman is a writer and translator. Her first book, I'm From Nowhere, was published in 2019. Her second book, What Are You, was published in 2022. Her first translation was published in 2023. She holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. She is working on a novel, a philosophy manuscript, and here and there, some screenplays. She lives in Berlin.  Books mentioned in this episode: Gothic Metaphysics: From Alchemy to the Anthropocene – Jodey Castricano James and the Giant Peach; The BFG; Matilda – Roald Dahl Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier Memories, Dreams, Reflections – C. G. Jung The Cipher – Kathe Koja The Left Hand of Darkness – Ursula K. Le Guin The Seventh Mansion – Maryse Meijer