Textual Healing with Mallory Smart

Emilly Giselle Prado is a writer, DJ, and educator living in Portland, Oregon with roots in the San Francisco Bay Area and Michoacán, Mexico. As an award-winning multimedia journalist, Emilly spent half a decade independently reporting on a wide range of topics, most often centered on amplifying the voices and experiences of people from historically marginalized communities. Her writing and photographs have appeared or are forthcoming in more than 30 publications including NPR, Marie Claire, Bitch Media, Eater, Electric Literature, The Oregonian, and Remezcla.

Emilly is the author of Funeral for Flaca (Future Tense Books, 2021), a memoir-in-essays called, “Utterly vulnerable, bold, and unique,” by Ms. Magazine, and Examining Assimilation (Enslow, 2019), a youth non-fiction title at the intersections of identity and society. She is a Tin House and Las Dos Brujas Workshop alumna, Blackburn Fellow and MFA Candidate at Randolph College and a co-founder of Portland in Color. She also moonlights as DJ Mami Miami with Noche Libre, the Latinx DJ collective she co-founded in 2017.

Originally I wanted to name this episode Strongbox but realized that few people would get the reference. Luckily, Spencer did as I explained getting almost shut out of my building by a neighbor as I was rushing inside to make it in time to do the interview because I gambled that I grab coffee and be back within 10 minutes (I made it). After we laughed about that for a while we got into some pretty random but fun conversation about what kind of music he's into, Gen X, his new book, and how he's pro-Steely Dan (another one).

A bit more about Spencer though: He has worked as a sailor, copywriter, economics professor, and record store clerk, among other disreputable professions. He was born in the Detroit suburbs, spent most of his life in Florida, and now lives in San Francisco. His first novel, How I’m Spending My Afterlife, will be published by Woodhall Press in September 2021.

We also recommend reading these because they're fun:

In this wildly fun episode, I interview Jeff Schnieder. Jeff is a writer, founder of Pig Roast Publishing, and the former guitarist and songwriter of the noise-rock bands Arab On Radar and Made in Mexico.

We get pretty into 90’s music and talking about the major genres of the time, different generations, weird stories about his old band Arab On Radar,  and how he went from a badass musician to a badass writer.

This is a pretty chill episode. Blake Wallin comes on and about his latest book, Papal Glow, amongst other things. We get into religion, politics, music, and how anxiety-inducing it is to be a millennial. But of course, we do our best to stick to music and what the book is about.

Papal Glow is the time between centuries, that little dust mote trailing in the sun's glare between folds of the partition that separates the public from true knowledge. It is the preventative strain keeping the powers-that-be at bay while the world swirls by unnoticed. This glow imbues a young boy named Leo, who must use the papacy to divide the time between those centuries, speed up modernity at the very beginning of the 19th century, and oppose the ever-growing reign of Napoleon. But as Leo grows into his papal role, the lines between what Leo wants and can achieve grow smaller as well, until Leo sets up a miracle himself and the time between centuries becomes as small as a dust mote.

In this episode, I interview Nicole Morning. We talk about Tinder, punk music, what's behind her writing, and how weird it is to be an adult.

She is the author of Selftitled* from Trident Press and _*Soft Animal_ from Hello America Stereo Cassette.

The stories and poems in Selftitled—as honest and charmingly chaotic as a deathbed confession—explore an America of tinder dates, mysterious scars, unflattering selfies, motherhood, and drugs. Things can be hard here, but self-pity will only distract from life's splendor. In Morning's work, the stars themselves toss beckoning pebbles at the bedroom window.

Nicole's stories and poems on Soft Animal are hard and graceful, flawless and troubled. Her writing is modern and relatable, unpretentious but deeply refined. Her voice is unique and human; a voice made for this form. You want to listen to this on long drives. You want to listen to this when you're supposed to be working. You want to listen to this. I'm telling you right now. You do.

On today’s podcast, I’ll be interviewing Steve Gergely. 

Steve Gergley is a writer and runner from Warwick, New York. His fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Atticus Review, Cleaver Magazine, Hobart, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, and others. In addition to writing fiction, he has composed and recorded five albums of original music.

In this episode, we talk about 90s music, writing, Tommy Boy, Gilmore Girls, and sorts of weird things.

In this episode, I'll be interviewing Joseph Fasano.

Fasano is the author of the novel The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing (Platypus Press, 2020), which was named one of the "20 Best Small Press Books of 2020." His books of poetry are The Crossing(Cider Press Review, 2018), praised by Ilya Kaminsky for its "lush drive to live, even in the darkest moments"; Vincent (2015), which Rain Taxi Review hailed as a "major literary achievement"; Inheritance (2014), a James Laughlin Award nominee; and Fugue for Other Hands (2013), which won the Cider Press Review Book Award and was nominated for the Poets' Prize, "awarded annually for the best book of verse published by a living American poet two years prior to the award."

In this show, we'll be discussing his writing, folk music, fascism, and future projects he's been working on.

Check out Bart's books from Trident Press

Take a look at his website for more information: https://bartschaneman.com/

In this week's episode, I interviewed literary icon, Aaron Burch. 

Aaron Burch is the author of the memoir/literary analysis Stephen King’s The Body; the short story collection, Backswing; and the novella, How to Predict the Weather. He is the Founding Editor of HOBART.

He is working on a novel, a maybe-chapbook of short-short prose, and collection of essays, THIS WAS ALL BEFORE THE INTERNET, about growing up and music and religion, essays from which, about Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails, and Alice in Chains, have appeared in Salon, Catapult, and The Smart Set.

He lives in Ann Arbor, MI with his collection of almost every ticket stub from a movie and concert he went to in the 90s and early 00s. He teaches at the University of Michigan.

We took time to talk about his music essays, concert experiences, and how Hobart got started. We even spoke about road trips and lock-ins.

BRIAN ALAN ELLIS runs House of Vlad Press and is the author of several books, including Sad Laughter (Civil Coping Mechanisms, 2018). His writing has appeared at Juked, Hobart, Monkeybicycle, Heavy Feather Review, Electric Literature, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Fanzine, and HTMLGIANT. He lives in Florida.

In this episode we explore all the different music mediums that you used to listen to and how we used to burn CDs and make mixtapes, obviously, we discuss KISS because he’s the man behind that question I ask almost every episode, and we hit on when we first met at a reading in Miami.