BITCHCONOCLAST

This week we talk with Dylan Bandy about developing their artistic voice. "There's a way in which talking about sex and sexuality is still important to me because it's still seen as this pornographic image, especially being a sexualized person. There are these ways of talking, like, yes while this may be frankly sexual, it is not your masturbation fantasy. Like, that's not what I'm here for. And, I guess, you know, you do what you want to. But, it's like you missed the fucking point. Because everything I was saying was about female friendship and how lonely I am."

Dylan Bandy is a filmmaker, photographer, singer, and events producer based in Seattle. They were was born in Alberta, raised in the American South, and the PNW, and have lived in New York, Berlin, and Chicago before re-locating to Seattle. A plant-lover, and feminist queerdo out of the DIY 'underground,' Dylan's works include She Must Die, a chemical light show and cabaret, Strangers In A Song, a performance installation, and Is This OK, a short film about queer romance in public places. 

BITCHCONOCLAST is a parent-child podcast about sex, feminism, & power.

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, Suzanne Morrison, and each other about our work and the state of the patriarchy.

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

Special thanks to Joshua Bandy, Richard Bandy, Jane Hodges & The Mineral School, and Rev. Judith Laxer. 

This week, I talk with my mother about her memoir, which is the story of my father's cancer and his brain injury. "Seemingly, he remembered who I was. But, we found we had to start educating him about his entire life, from who he was to his entire childhood, our wedding day, the days that you children were born, all kinds of things.. that just absented themselves... The layers of what will go missing in a trauma."

Sonya Lea is a memoirist, essayist, and fiction writer. Her memoir Wondering Who You Are was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and has garnered praise in Oprah Magazine, People, and the BBC who named it a "Top 10 Book." Her essays have appeared in Salon, The Southern Review, Brevity, Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Ms. Magazine, The Rumpus, and more. Sonya teaches writing at Hugo House in Seattle and to women veterans throughout the United States. 

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast about sex, feminism, & power. 

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison about their work and the state of the patriarchy.

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

With Suzanne this week in episode six, we talk about mothers and daughters and sex and orgasms and credos. "I was having oral sex for the first time.. and in my mind I circled those words: oral and sex. And going down. And the fact that this was being done to me, was almost enough to make me cum. It was his tongue that did it in the end though. ...I had been giving myself orgasms for as long as I can remember."

Suzanne Morrison is the author of Yoga Bitch: One Woman's Quest to Conquer Skepticism, Cynicism, and Cigarettes on the Path to Enlightenment. Yoga Bitch had its start as a long-running one-woman show of the same title which played in New York, London, and across the United States. A recipient of 4 Culture and Artist Trust Grants, Morrison's essays and fiction have appeared in American Short Fiction, Litro UK, Salt Hill Journal, Washington Square, Printers Row, The Huffington Post, and the anthology Going Om. Susanne teaches at Hugo House in Seattle, and she helps women veterans write their stories through The Red Badge Project. 

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast about sex, feminism, & power.

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison about their work and the state of the patriarchy.

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

In episode five, we talk with Karen Karbo about unsuspecting and historic feminists.  "One of the women I've been researching is Helen Gurley Brown [1st Editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan Magazine] and it's really interesting because everything that we're talking about now, she talked about in Sex & The Single Girl, which was published in 1962. ...One of the chapters is: How Do You Have An Affair With A Married Man. Nobody had seen anything like it."

Karen Karbo is the author of multiple novels, working of creative non-fiction, and a memoir. Her Kick-Ass Women Series includes Julia Child Rules, How Georgia Became O'Keeffe, The Gospel According to Coco Chanel, and How To Hepburn. Her short stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in Elle, Vogue, Esquire, Outside, The New York Times, Salon, Slate, and other magazines. She's a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, and Oregon Book Award, and was selected for the Amtrak residency. 

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast about sex, feminism, & power.

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison about their work and the state of the patriarchy.

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

This week we talk with Vanessa Veselka about the 'quest narrative' and gendered experiences of freedom. "Jack Kerouac never went anywhere. He had cash and he crossed the country—like, he wants a prize??" We talk to her about her popular GQ essay, her novel, and her ideas on class warfare in America. 

Venessa Veselka has been at various times a teenage runaway, a sex worker, a union organizer, and a student of paleontology. Her work appears in Salon, GQ, Bitch Magazine, The Atlantic, Tin House, Zyzzyva, and Best American Essays. Her novel Zazen won the 2012 PEN/Bingham Prize for fiction, and in 2013 she was chosen as a MacDowell Fellow. Her new novel The Great Offshore Grounds is long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award. Buy it at Powell's. 

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast about sex, feminism, & power.

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison about their work and the state of the patriarchy.

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

In Episode 3, we talk with Elissa Washuta. "It's only been in the last of couple of years that I've learned to accept that I have feelings and that people have feelings and it's natural and it's normal. Which, when I was first diagnosed with bi-polar disorder, I didn't believe that... Everything was a potential symptom. There was no room in my life for sadness, for grief, for excitement, because anything scared me as a potential symptom." 

Elissa Washuta is an American Indian author from the Cowlitz people of Washington State. She is the author of Starvation Mode and My Body Is A Book of Rules, named a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She has received fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Trust, 4Culture, Potlatch Fund, Hugo House, and Creative Capital. Her new book White Magic comes out in 2021 from Tin House. Pre-order available now. 

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast about sex, feminism, & power.

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison about their work and the state of the patriarchy.

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

In Episode 2, we talk to Claire Dederer about her new memoir Love & Trouble. "I would not have wanted my sexuality be born of molestation or victimhood, but now that I have it--like, what are you going to do with it? It's like a bricolage, right?  What are you going to make out of what you are given. And as a very sexual person, I made what I made." 

Claire Dederer is the author of two critically acclaimed memoirs: Love & Trouble: A Midlife Reckoning and NYTimes Bestseller Poser: My Life in 23 Yoga Poses. Dederer is a long-time contributor to the New York Times. Her essays, criticism, and reviews have also appeared in The Atlantic, Harpers, The Nation, Vogue, New York Magazine, Slate, Salon, and many other publications.

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast on sex, feminism, & power.

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison, and to each other, about our work and the state of the patriarchy.

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

In our very first episode, we talk with Nicole Hardy about celibacy and religion and her forthcoming memoir. "A lot of people have come from repressive sexual environments (for whatever reason) and I think giving voice to the complications of that issue was really important.. Because, when you talk about living a celibate life—for people who don't do that—it seems an easy thing not to be celibate... Anyone who has had any experience in that kind of situation knows, that it's a much deeper situation than the having or not having of sex."  

Nicole Hardy is a memoirist, essayist, and poet. Her memoir Confessions of a Ladder-Day Virgin was a finalist for the 2014 Washington State Book Award. Her work has appeared in literary journals and newspapers including the Washington Post, Marie Claire, and the New York Times Modern Love column. Her essay Single, Female, Mormon, Alone was noted in 2012's Best American Essays. And her fourth coming memoir is about a year she spent at sea traveling around the world. 

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast on sex, feminism, & power.

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison about their work and the state of the patriarchy.

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast on sex, feminism, and power.

In season one, we interview Pacific-Northwest authors Nicole Hardy, Claire Dederer, Elissa Washuta, Vanessa Veselka, Karen Karbo, and Suzanne Morrison about their work and the state of the patriarchy. Then we talk to each other about our work and how our sexuality has impacted our work as artists. 

Producers: Sonya Lea & Dylan Bandy

Special thanks to Joshua Bandy, Richard Bandy, Jane Hodges & The Mineral School, Rev. Judith Laxer, and Christopher Ryan

BITCHCONOCLAST is a podcast on sex, feminism, and power. 

The theme song is written by Dylan Bandy and performed by Adam Cohen-Leadholm (guitar) & Frankie Mars Gunner (drums).