Keep the Channel Open

Sarah Hollowell is a writer based in Indiana. Sarah's debut novel, A Dark and Starless Forest, is a YA contemporary fantasy story centered on a family of foster sisters learning about their magic, until suddenly they start disappearing. In our conversation we talked about the difference in process between short stories and novels, how her novel portrays abuse dynamics, and the importance of fan fiction. Then in the second segment, Sarah and I talked about the Alpha Workshop.

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Show Notes:

• Sarah Hollowell
• Follow @sarahhollowell on Twitter
• Purchase A Dark and Starless Forest: Viewpoint Books (Columbus, IN) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Alpha Young Writers Workshop
• Ashley Schumacher - The Renaissance of Gwen Hathaway
• Rude Tales of Magic

Transcript Episode Credits

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

Ayesha Raees is a poet and hybrid artist based in New York, Miami, and Lahore. In her debut book of poetry, Coining a Wishing Tower, she explores death, grief, culture, religion, separation, and return in a hybrid form that is part poetry, part narrative, part fable, and entirely remarkable. In our conversation, we talked about her book, her writing process, and sustaining a relationship with her work over time. Then in the second segment, we discussed community. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Stitcher | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Share: Tweet this episode | Share to Facebook Connect: Newsletter | Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes:

• Ayesha Raees
• Purchase Coining a Wishing Tower: Platypus Press | Bookshop.org
• Rainier Maria Rilke - Letters to a Young Poet
• bell hooks - The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love

Transcript Episode Credits

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

Anahid Nersessian is a professor and critic based in Los Angeles, CA. In her latest book, Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse, Anahid takes the reader through close readings of John Keats's six Great Odes, providing cultural context and explicating their themes of sexual violence, melancholy, and the seductiveness of beauty. More than that, though, the book is, itself, a love story. In our conversation, Anahid and I talked about how and why Keats's Odes still resonate with readers today, how personal narrative entered these essays, and how it functions in them. Then in the second segment, we talked about experimental critical writing. Subscribe:

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Show Notes:

• Anahid Nersessian
• Purchase Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse: Skylight Books (Los Angeles, CA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Anahid Nersessian - Utopia Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment
• Anahid Nersessian - The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life
• Anahid Nersessian - "Catastrophic Desires"
• William Shakespeare - "Sonnet 73"
• Dorothy Van Ghent - Keats: The Myth of the Hero
• Danez Smith
• Alexander Pope - "The Rape of the Lock"
• Walter Jackson Bate - John Keats
• William Wordsworth - "Preface to Lyrical Ballads"
• Ingrid Sischy - "Good Intentions"
• Peterloo Massacre
• Los Angeles Review of Books - "Of Poets and Critics: A Conversation Between Anahid Nersessian and Michael Robbins"
• Alexander Chee
• Anahid Nersessian in conversation with Zoe Kazan
• Helen Vendler - The Odes of John Keats
• Wendy's Subway
• Renee Gladman
• John Coltrane - "Olé"
• Rachel Pollack
• Penny Arcade - "Parabolic"
• Heather K. Love
• Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick
• Rosie Stockton - Pumpjack
• Rosie Stockton - Permanent Volta

Transcript Episode Credits

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

For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, writer and podcaster Maggie Tokuda-Hall joins us to discuss Susanna Clark's 2020 novel Piranesi. A relatively slim volume, Piranesi is surprisingly difficult to summarize but, like its labyrinthine setting, with patience and attention the book will reveal its profound beauty and kindness. (Conversation recorded February 24, 2022.) Subscribe:

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Show Notes:

• Maggie Tokuda-Hall
• Failure to Adapt
• Purchase Piranesi: Mrs. Dalloway's (Berkeley, CA) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Purchase Also an Octopus: Mrs. Dalloway's (Berkeley, CA) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Purchase The Mermaid, the Witch, and the Sea: Mrs. Dalloway's (Berkeley, CA) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Purchase Squad: Mrs. Dalloway's (Berkeley, CA) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Purchase Love in the Library: Mrs. Dalloway's (Berkeley, CA) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Susanna Clarke - Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
• Jon Klassen
• Mac Barnett
• Carson Ellis
• Mac Barnett & Carson Ellis - What Is Love?
• M. T. Anderson - The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing
• Kazuo Ishiguro - Klara and the Sun
• Normal Gossip
• Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah - Friday Black

Transcript Episode Credits

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

There's a way in which the end of a serious relationship can shake your entire concept of yourself, and through your grief you have to find yourself again. Yanyi's latest book of poems, Dream of the Divided Field, braids poems about heartbreak and implied emotional violence with poems about transition and immigration. Each has a similar but distinct sense of a loss of self, a search for self, a yearning for connection and belonging, a sometimes violent disconnection—to a partner, to a place or culture, to oneself and one's own body. In our conversation, Yanyi and I discussed his book, deconstruction and reconstruction, attachment to nuance, and the relationship between beauty and violence. Then for the second segment, we talked about grief.

(Conversation recorded February 28, 2022.)

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Show Notes:

• Yanyi
• Yanyi - Dream of the Divided Field
• Yanyi - The Year of Blue Water
• Yanyi - The Reading
• Samuel Ace
• TC Tolbert
• Parul Sehgal - "The Case Against the Trauma Plot"
• Carmen Maria Machado - In the Dream House
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 33: José Olivarez
• Jane Hirshfield - Nine Gates

Transcript Episode Credits

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

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a writer based in London, UK. Rowan's second novel, Starling Days, is a beautiful story about the complex love between the book's two protagonists, Mina and Oscar, and their respective challenges in the wake of Mina's suicide attempt. Starling Days explores family and love in many forms, and how people both connect and separate. In our conversation, Rowan and I discussed the depiction of mental illness in her book, how she approached writing the multifaceted relationships between the book's characters, and why it was important to her to include multiracial characters. Then in the second segment, we talked about faith and how we make and find meaning.

(Conversation recorded March 30, 2021.)

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Show Notes:

• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan
• Purchase Starling Days: Pages of Hackney (London, UK) | Greenlight Bookstore (NYC) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Rowan Hisayo Buchanan - "The Woman Scared of Her Own Kimono"
• Ruth Ozeki - A Tale for the Time Being
• Celeste Ng - Everything I Never Told You
• Violet Kupersmith
• Violet Kupersmith - Build Your House Around My Body

Transcript Episode Credits

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

Farrah Karapetian is an artist based in California. Known for her large-scale photograms, Farrah's wide-ranging practice incorporates sculpture, performance, and different forms of mark-making to stretch the photographic medium as she is driven by her intense and rigorous curiosity. In our conversation, Farrah and I talked about the appeal of the photographic medium, the tension between constructing an image and the happy accident, and the ethics of artistic beauty. Then in the second segment, we discussed the Nardal sisters and how we develop a language around issues like exoticization.

(Conversation recorded March 24, 2021.)

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Show Notes:

• Farrah Karapetian
• Farrah Karapetian - Muscle Memory
• Farrah Karapetian - Stagecraft
• Farrah Karapetian - Slips & Pushes
• HereIn Journal - "Chantel Paul on Farrah Karapetian"
• AnomolousCo - Beckett & The Virtual tickets
• Diane Rosenstein Gallery - Expo Chicago Online 2021
• Farrah Karapetian in Conversation with Tracy Sharpley-Whiting
• Venice Family Clinic Art Walk + Auction 2021
• Orange County Museum of Art - 2013 California-Pacific Triennial
• Erving Goffman - The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
• Claire A. Warden
• Paula Riff
• Thomas Demand
• Vik Muniz
• Farrah Karapetian - "The Kitchen"
• Farrah Karapetian - "Its Negative"
• Vanessa Beecroft
• Tino Sehgal
• James Van Der Zee
• Rineke Dijkstra
• Bertholt Brecht
• Augusto Boal
• Farrah Karapetian - Relief
• Farrah Karapetian - Flags & Teleprompters
• Ingrid Sischy - "Good Intentions"
• David Levi Strauss - Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics
• André Breton - Nadja
• Anahid Nersessian - Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse
• Jeanne Nardal
• Paulette Nardal
• Alain Locke
• W. E. B. Du Bois
• Steven Y. Wong - Circles and Circuits: Chinese Caribbean Art
• Mark Sealy - Decolonising the Camera: Photography in Racial Time
• Robert Rauschenberg - Borealis 1988-92
• Marie-Magdaleine Carbet - "Obeah" and Other Martinican Stories
• Langston Hughes - I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey
• Lola Álvarez Bravo
• Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographers

Transcript Episode Credits

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

Tucson-based photographer Ken Rosenthal's work has always stuck in my mind for both its striking visual style and the way that he uses images to represent and explore his internal emotional and psychological state. Whether he's looking at landscapes or family members or familiar objects, his photographs resonate because they represent the personal. We talked about several bodies of work, including his recent series The Forest and a work in progress called Days On the Mountain. For the second segment, Ken and I talked about change, and how when it comes in our personal lives it can spur us to new heights in our work.

(Recorded June 22, 2016. Originally released August 3, 2016.)

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Show Notes:

• Ken Rosenthal
• Purchase Days on the Mountain: Book Only | Limited Ed. with Print
• Ken's online store
• Center for Creative Photography - "Why Photography?" event
• Ken Rosenthal - Photographs 2001-2009
• Ken Rosenthal - The Forest
• Medium Festival of Photography
• Mary Virginia Swanson
• Diane Arbus
• Sally Mann - Hold Still
• Ken's Instagram
• Ken's Twitter

Transcript Episode Credits

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

For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, poet and podcaster Gabrielle Bates joins me for a conversation about Brigit Pegeen Kelly's 1994 poetry collection Song. In our conversation, Gabrielle and I talked about how Kelly builds the worlds of her poems, how the poems layer metaphor, and how the poems manage to be simultaneously (and paradoxically) both surreal and grounded.

(Conversation recorded February 4, 2021.)

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Show Notes:

• Gabrielle Bates
• The Poet Salon
• Purchase Song: Open Books (Seattle, WA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org
• Brigit Pegeen Kelly - "Song" (title poem)
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 49: Maggie Smith
• Maggie Smith - Good Bones
• Sally Mann - Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs
• Muzzle - Jeanann Verlee on "Song" by Brigit Pegeen Kelly
• The Poet Salon - Ada Limón + January Gimlet
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 122: Kary Wayson
• Kenyon Review - "The Slip interview with Kary Wayson"
• Brigit Pegeen Kelly - "Dead Doe"
• The Sundress Blog - "Lyric Essentials: Emilia Phillips reads 'Song' by Brigit Pegeen Kelly"
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 120: Kazim Ali
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 121: KTCO Book Club - Tender (with Wm Henry Morris)

Transcript Episode Credits

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

Kary Wayson is a poet based in Seattle, WA. The poems Kary's latest collection, The Slip, are wonderfully slippery in both form and feeling, in a way that demands attention and rewards deep engagement. In our conversation we discussed what a poem can do, how we approach "meaning" in poetry, and how life changes affect our art. Then in the second segment, we talked about time and our human perception of duration.

(Conversation recorded January 5, 2021.)

Bonus Reading: Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign can hear Kary read her poem "Untitled Poem (for a Feeling)."

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Show Notes:

• Kary Wayson
• Purchase The Slip: Burnside Review (Publisher) | Bookshop.org | Open Books (Seattle, WA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA)
• The Stranger - "Falling for The Slip"
• The Seattle Review of Books - "After years of drought, Kary Wayson is writing poetry again"
• Keep the Channel Open - Episode 33: José Olivarez
• Kenyon Review - "The Slip interview with Kary Wayson"
• Sarah Manguso - "A Glittering"
• Neutral Milk Hotel - "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"
• Robert Capa - "Watching the Tour de France in front of the bicycle shop owned by Pierre Cloarec, one of the cyclists in the race, Pleyben, France" - First Image - Second Image
• Next KTCO Book Club pick: Song, by Brigit Pegeen Kelly

Transcript Episode Credits

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