Keep the Channel Open

For this KTCO Book Club conversation, I'm joined by writer and group facilitator Martha Crawford for a discussion about Ingrid Rojas Contreras's 2023 memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds. In our conversation, Martha and I talked about different ways of knowing, how to read across cultures without being extractive, storytelling as healing, and what identity means in the context of forgetting.

(Recorded March 9, 2024)

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• Martha Crawford
• Purchase The Man Who Could Move Clouds, by Ingrid Rojas Contreras: The Collected Works Bookstore (Santa Fe, NM) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Vine Deloria, Jr.
• Hildegard of Bingen
• Thomas Merton - "The Door That Ends All Doors"

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

Writer and friend José Pablo Iriarte returns to the show to discuss their debut middle-grade novel, Benny Ramirez and the Nearly Departed. In our conversation, we talked about building stories without antagonists, writing for young readers, and what makes coming-of-age stories such an enduring phenomenon. Then for the second segment, we talked about the importance of storytelling in creating empathy and connection in our incredibly divided society.

(Recorded April 6, 2024.)

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• José Pablo Iriarte
• Purchase Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed: White Rose Books (Kissimmee, FL) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 23: José Iriarte
• José Pablo Iriarte - "Proof by Induction"
• José Pablo Iriarte - "The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our Births"
• José Pablo Iriarte - "Secrets and Things We Don't Say Out Loud"
• José Pablo Iriarte - "Life in Stone, Glass, and Plastic"
• José Pablo Iriarte - "Spirit of Home"
• Becky Chambers - A Psalm for the Wild-Built
• A. S. King's Instagram post
• Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You
• Ryka Aoki - Light From Uncommon Stars
• A. S. King - Attack of the Black Rectangles

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

Sarah Rose Etter is a writer based in Los Angeles, CA. In Sarah's latest novel, Ripe, a young woman is trapped in a dream-job-turned-corporate-nightmare at a cutthroat Silicon Valley tech startup. Her bosses are capricious and cruel, the city she lives in is crumbling under late capitalism, and everywhere she goes she is followed by her own personal black hole. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about the relationship between her surrealist fiction and poetry, why visual art is important to her, and what it means for a character to have agency. Then for the second segment we discussed dead authors, reading in translation, and creative insecurity.

(Recorded March 2, 2024.)

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• Sarah Rose Etter
• Purchase Ripe: Skylight Books (Los Angeles, CA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Sarah Rose Etter - The Book of X
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 89: Julia Dixon Evans
• Tommy Pico
• Lilliam Rivera
• Kristen Arnett
• Sarah Rose Etter - "Unpublishable: Censored Emails from Noam Chomsky"
• Alina Szapocznikow
• Vija Celmins
• Nylon - "Sarah Rose Etter's Ripe and the Rotted Underbelly of Capitalism"
• Sarah Rose Etter - "Inside the Cardboard Box of My Heart"
• Mark Rothko
• Louise Bourgeois
• Donald Judd
• Sarah Rose Etter - "Girl, What Is Wrong With You?"
• Parasite
• Uncut Gems
• Sarah Rose Etter - "Subglacial Rivers, A Love Poem, Because… & Either/Or"
• Crane Brinton - The Anatomy of Revolution
• Brandon Taylor - "living shadows: aesthetics of moral worldbuilding"
• Tove Ditlevsen - The Copenhagen Trilogy
• Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, the Mistress and the Tangerine

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

For this KTCO "Book" Club conversation, writer Maggie Tokuda-Hall returns to the show to talk about the game Baldur's Gate 3. In our conversation, Maggie and I talked about what it's like to experience a story with so many branching paths, how player choices reflect the player's personality, as well as some standout storytelling moments from the game.

(Recorded February 9, 2024.)

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• Maggie Tokuda-Hall
• Purchase Baldur's Gate 3
• Purchase The Siren, the Song, and the Spy
• Preorder The Worst Ronin
• Pools of Darkness
• Unlimited Adventures
• Icewind Dale
• Baldur's Gate 2
• Octopath Traveler
• The Last of Us
• The Adventure Zone
• Dungeons & Daddies
• Neil Newbon
• Roger Ebert - "Video games can never be art"
• The Brothers Sun
• Sarah Lotz - The Impossible Us

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

Olatunde Osinaike is a poet based in Atlanta, GA. In his debut full-length poetry collection, Tender Headed, Olatunde explores Black masculinity, both celebrating and interrogating it in his sonically virtuosic poems. We talked about his approach to poetry, what poetic lineage means to him, and the silences inherent in patriarchy. Then for the second segment, we talked about departure albums and André 3000's New Blue Sun.

(Recorded January 20, 2024.)

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• Olatunde Osinaike
• Purchase Tender Headed: 44th and 3rd Booksellers (Atlanta, GA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Akashic Books (publisher)
• Olatunde Osinaike - Upcoming Events
• Bonus Reading for Patreon Subscribers: Olatunde Osinaike reads "Being Human Takes a Lot of Nerve"
• Etheridge Knight - "The Sun Came"
• Gwendolyn Brooks - "truth"
• Paul M. Angle - "We Asked Gwendolyn Brooks about the Creative Environment in Illinois"
• André 3000 - New Blue Sun
• American Fiction
• They Cloned Tyrone
• Tristan Harris
• Knives Out

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

For this KTCO Book Club conversation, poet and podcaster Rachel Zucker returns to the show to discuss Eugenia Leigh's poetry collection Bianca. In our conversation, we talked about our approaches to talking about books with their authors, how form shapes how we take in intense subject matter in a poem, and how a book can be a means of connection.

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• Rachel Zucker
• Purchase Bianca: Print (Portland, ME) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Eugenia Leigh
• James Schuyler - "This Dark Apartment"
• Jack Kornfield - "Transform Your Life Through Jack Kornfield's Most Powerful Stories: A 10 Hour Journey"

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

Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City. In his debut novel, Monstrilio, Gerardo draws from both horror and literary fiction traditions to tell a story about grief, family, and self-acceptance. In our conversation, Gerardo and I talked about genre expectations, genre fiction as a site of art, and what it means to be monstrous. For the second segment, we talked about the tension between fulfilling your own artistic vision and creating work that will sell.

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• Gerardo Sámano Córdova
• Purchase Monstrilio: Books Are Magic (Brooklyn, NY) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Paul Semel - "Exclusive Interview: 'Monstrilio' Author Gerardo Sámano Córdova"
• At Home with Literati: Gerardo Sámano Córdova & Kelly Link
• CrimeReads - "Horror Does a Body Good, or, the Story of My Teeth"
• Chuck Tingle
• Petite Maman
• Petite Maman - Official Trailer

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

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a writer based in the Bronx, NY. In his debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana presents us with a dystopian future America where convicted prisoners fight each other to the death in a televised bloodsport. The book is both a blistering critique of the US carceral system and an insistence on the inalienable humanity of every person. In our conversation, Nana and I talked about what satire and dystopia open up for him as a writer, why it's important to him to implicate both the reader and himself in his work, and how he thinks about prison abolition. Then in the second segment, we talked about the seductive nature of success as an artist in a capitalist society.

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• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
• Purchase Chain-Gang All-Stars: The Lit Bar (Bronx, NY) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Kendrick Lamar - "The Art of Peer Pressure"
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Friday Black
• Metroidvania (game genre)
• @america_is_the_bad_place
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 128: Anahid Nersessian
• John Keats - "To Autumn"
• Starship Troopers (1997 film)
• John Gardner - The Art of Fiction
• Ta-Nehisi Coates - "Killing Dylan Roof"
• Kadhja Bonet - The Visitor

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

Rachel Zucker is a writer, podcast, and teacher based in New York and Maine. Her latest book, The Poetics of Wrongness, is a collection of essays (originally written and performed for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series) delving into her own poetics, motherhood, the history of confessional poetry, and the ethics of "say everything" poetry. In our conversation, Rachel and I talked about wrongness as a stance against moral purity, about addiction to doubt, and about poetry as an opportunity to create outside of capitalism. Then in the second segment, we talked about her new project, the Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics.

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• Rachel Zucker
• Purchase The Poetics of Wrongness: Print (Portland, ME) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Commonplace
• Commonplace - Episode 110: The Poetics of Wrongness
• Adrienne Rich - Of Woman Born
• Joyelle McSweeney - "Wrong Poets Society"
• Alice Notley - Disobedience
• Alice Notley - "The Poetics of Disobedience"
• Liz Lerman's Critical Response Process
• Julia Cameron - The Artist's Way
• Henrik Ibsen - A Doll's House
• A Doll's House (2023 Broadway production)

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

For our latest KTCO Book Club episode, writer Sarah Gailey joins us for a discussion of H. A. Clarke's YA novels The Scapegracers and The Scratch Daughters. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about the ways Clarke's novels subvert genre expectations, about the quality of teen girls' rage, and about why these books are "capital-I Important."

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• Sarah Gailey
• Purchase The Scapegracers: Loyalty (Washington, DC) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Purchase The Scratch Daughters: Loyalty (Washington, DC) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Purchase Just Like Home: Loyalty (Washington, DC) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Subscribe to The Personal Canons Cookbook
• The Craft
• Sarah Gailey - When We Were Magic
• Maggie Tokuda-Hall - Squad
• Euphoria
• How different generations react to a gay character being introduced
• Holly Black - The Cruel Prince
• Mark Russel & Mike Feehan - Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles

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