The poems in Abbie Kiefer’s debut collection, Certain Shelter, are, in my reading, about aftermath. They are about grief and loss, whether that is the loss of the speaker’s mother to cancer or her hometown’s changing landscape. But they are also about change and rebirth, and both the anxiety and the possibility of an unknown future. In our conversation, Abbie and I talked about television as a touch point in her poems, how memory is layered, and how ephemerality is central to the human experience. Then for the second segment, we talked about doing things you’re not good at.

(Recorded February 7, 2025)

Bonus Reading: Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign can hear Abbie read her poem “I’ve Learned to Accept.”

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• Abbie Kiefer
• Purchase Certain Shelter: Print (Portland, ME) | June Road Press (publisher)
• Abbie Kiefer - Upcoming Events
• Gee’s Bend Quiltmakers
• While I Yet Live

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

The paintings in Marisa DeLuca’s series Spectre document the changing urban landscape of the city she lives in—Oceanside, California—mourning spaces made ephemeral by the forces of gentrification. In our conversation we talked about the difference between painting and photography, how process affects the ontology of an art object, how audiences make meaning, and the intersection of art and activism. Then for the second segment, Marisa and I talked about spirit of place and the importance of the commons in communities.

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• Marisa DeLuca
• HereIn - Marisa DeLuca with Herein
• San Diego Union-Tribune - Saving what was: Oceanside artist captures on canvas memories of her fast-changing city
• Marisa DeLuca - E. G.
• Dérive
• Marisa DeLuca - Beloved
• Marisa DeLuca - Or No Side
• Marisa DeLuca - Keeper
• Hauntology
• Grant Kester
• Artists in Solidarity
• Jeanette Winterson
• Save Our Heritage Organisation
• The Whaley House Museum
• Pollock-Krasner House
• Jacques-Louis David - Portrait of Cooper Penrose
• Marianela de la Hoz

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

In the wake of this year’s election, I found myself feeling a lot of things, but most of all that what sustains us through difficult times is always relationships and community. So I reached out to some past guests of the show and invited them to share some updates about where they are, who they’re connected to, and how they’re thinking about their work right now. At the end of the episode, I close by sharing a clip from the latest episode of Hey, It’s Me.

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• Commonplace - Episode 86: Global Roll Call, Part 1
• José Pablo Iriarte
• Jennifer Baker
• Lisa M. Robinson
• Susan Rosenberg Jones
• Gabrielle Bates
• André Ramos-Woodard
• Maggie Tokuda-Hall
• Alanna Airitam
• Alyssa Harad
• David Naimon
• Becky Senf
• Amanda Marchand
• Matthew Salesses
• Rachel Zucker
• Hey, It’s Me - Episode 13: Bring Your Whole Self, Including Your Hopelessness

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Mike Sakasegawa
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Perry Janes’s debut poetry collection, Find Me When You’re Ready, follows its speaker from childhood in Detroit to young adulthood in Los Angeles, a coming-of-age story in five acts, told through a series of lyric moments. The poems in this collection confront childhood sexual abuse and the story of what it means to be a man, ultimately reaching toward healing and love. In our conversation we talked about what poetry and prose do differently, how masculinity is presented in these poems, and why it was important to both include trauma but not dwell in it. For the second segment, we talked about attention and how hard it can be to focus.

(Recorded November 12, 2024)

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• Perry Janes
• Purchase Find Me When You’re Ready: Book Soup (Los Angeles, CA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Natalie Eilbert - Indictus
• Alexander Chee - How to Write an Autobiographical Novel
• Peter Ho Davies
• Linda Gregg - “We Manage Most When We Manage Small”
• Monster (2023 film)

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Writer Sarah Gailey returns to the show for a discussion about their new novella, Have You Eaten? This serialized story follows four young queer characters as they traverse an America in the process of collapse, taking care of each other along the way. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about experimentation in fiction, vine-ripened tomatoes, cooking as an act of care, and what apocalypse means. Then for the second segment, we talked about why we re-recorded the second segment, sin-flattening and high-control groups, the necessity of interpersonal repair.

(Episode recorded September 27, 2024 and September 30, 2024)

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• Sarah Gailey
• Purchase Have You Eaten? (e-book): Kobo | Apple Books | Amazon
• Sarah Gailey - “STET”
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 109: Sarah Gailey (When We Were Magic)
• Sarah Gailey - “Stone Soup #24: Mending Sauce”
• Sarah Gailey - “Pantry Cookies”
• Sabrina Imbler - How Far the Light Reaches: A Life in Ten Sea Creatures

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

In the opening poem of Rachel Edelman’s debut collection, Dear Memphis, the speaker returns to their home city after a long time away, traversing a landscape that is both familiar and foreign, a place to which she belongs but also doesn’t. Over the course of the collection, Edelman asks questions about heritage and inheritance; about exile, diaspora, and migration; about home; about marginalization and privilege, oppression and complicity. In our conversation, we talked about acts of care, the importance of self-criticality, what poems do, and the necessary and the possible. Then for the second segment, we talked about corresponding via hand-written letters.

(Recorded June 28, 2024)

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• Rachel Edelman
• Purchase Dear Memphis: Open Books (Seattle, WA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Jacob Lawrence - The Migration Series
• Morgan Parker - Other People’s Comfort Keeps Me Up At Night
• Alan Kurdi (The boy on the beach)
• emet ezell
• Rachel Edelman & emet ezell - “The Correspondent’s Cheeks Are as a Bed of Spices”
• James Merrill - “Lost in Translation”
• AGNI 99

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Writer, editor, and podcaster Jennifer Baker’s debut YA novel, Forgive Me Not, imagines a near-future America in which the juvenile criminal justice system has been “reformed” to allow young people to undergo grueling Trials instead of incarceration. It’s an incisive and powerful story about carceral justice, as well as a moving coming-of-age and family story. In our conversation we talked about writing about serious topics for younger readers, how she approached writing her characters, and why it was important for her to focus on systems rather than individual innocence or guilt. Then for the second segment we talked about finding inspiration in other art forms.

(Recorded April 3, 2024.)

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• Jennifer Baker
• Purchase Forgive Me Not: Kew & Willow Books (Kew Gardens, NY) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Minorities in Publishing podcast
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Chain-Gang All-Stars
• Kalief Browder
• Lionel Tate
• Squid Game
• Annie Proulx - “Brokeback Mountain” (short story)
• Brokeback Mountain (film)
• Rachel Eliza Griffiths
• Nicholas Nichols
• Titus Kaphar
• Kelsey Norris - House Gone Quiet

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Writer Rachel Lyon returns to the show to discuss her latest novel, Fruit of the Dead, a contemporary retelling of the Persephone myth in which a young woman is seduced by wealth and privilege in a story about addiction, class, sexual assault, and power. In our conversation, we talked about how malleable identity can be during adolescence and how that informed how she wrote the character of Cory, how family members do and don’t see each other, and why it was important for the characters in this story to have agency. Then for the second segment we talked about stages of life.

(Recorded June 28, 2024.)

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• Rachel Lyon
• Purchase Fruit of the Dead: Broadside Bookshop (Northampton, MA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Rachel Lyon - Self-Portrait with Boy
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 79: Rachel Lyon (January 2019)
• The Holdovers
• Charles Baxter - First Light
• Elizabeth Jane Howard - The Long View

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Introducing Hey, It's Me!

I'm happy to announce a new podcast from me and my friend Rachel Zucker, Hey, It's Me! Here's the first episode as a bonus for KTCO listeners. Enjoy!

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For this KTCO Book Club conversation, poet Amorak Huey joins me to discuss Layli Long Soldier’s 2017 poetry collection, Whereas. In our conversation, we talked about the way the poems confront language, what language means in the context of forced assimilation, and how the poems engage with both history and contemporary reality.

(Recorded March 26, 2024)

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• Amorak Huey
• Purchase Whereas: Gathering Volumes (Parisburg, OH) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Purchase Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy
• Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans
• Between the Covers - Layli Long Soldier : Whereas
• R. F. Kuang - Babel

• Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
• Music: Podington Bear
• Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo