Host Eric Newman is joined by Stephen Van Dyck, author of People I Met on the Internet, a series of narrative vignettes derived from the list Van Dyck kept for over a decade of all the men he first met online. Van Dyck talks about how internet chat rooms and blogs offered him a new safe world of contact as a shy queer teen; the unique counterintuitive intimacy of online encounters, and how sex often operates as a backdrop for more interesting experiences. Also, Shelly Oria, editor of Indelible in the Hippocampus: Writings from the Me Too Movement, returns to recommend the books authored by the contributors to the collection including Blueprints for Building Better Girls by Elissa Shappell; The Bed Moved: Stories by Rebecca Schiff; See Through: Stories by Nelly Reifler; The Dark Dark by Samantha Hunt; Blue Talk and Love by Mecca Jamilah Sullivan; and Our Revolution: A Mother and Daughter at Midcentury by Honor Moore.

This is the second episode in our series on LA and Southern California writers, artists and filmmakers. This episode of the LARB Radio Hour is supported in part by the California Arts Council, a state agency. Learn more at www.arts.ca.gov. Any findings, opinions, or conclusions contained herein are not necessarily those of the California Arts Council.