The Host Dispatch: A Literary Podcast

Welcome to Season 4 of The Host Dispatch!! 

We're kicking this season off with another pressing question: "What the Hell is Dada?" Annar and Claire dive into the absurdity, revolution, play, and anti-art of the Dada movement, sharing some of their favorite writings from the likes of Tristan Tzara, Til Brugman, and Mina Loy.

Here's our curated Dada Reading List, including books we discuss in this episode:

Seven Dada Manifestos and Lampistries by Tristan Tzara 

The Dada Market Anthology edited by Willard Bohn

The Lost Lunar Baedeker: Poems by Mina Loy

Three New York Dadas and The Blind Man: Marcel Duchamp, Henri-Pierre Roché, Beatrice Wood 

The Dada Spirit by Emmanuelle De L'Ecotais 

In this episode, we had the immense delight of chatting with the Fall 2022 Host Publications Chapbook Prize Winner, Sophia Stid! We discuss her prize-winning chapbook, But For I Am a Woman a gorgeous collection of poetry which explores the intersection of personal autonomy and deep spiritual connection through the writings and life of Julian of Norwich (ca. 1342 – 1416), a mystic who was the first woman known to write a book in the English language. 

Here are some of the books and other media discussed in this episode:

Revelations of Divine Love by Julian of Norwich

Reassemblage (documentary film) by Trinh T. Minh-ha

The Works of Dorothy Sayers

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa

Sensational Books Exhibit at Bodliean Libraries

We hope you enjoy this conversation among friends, and as always, thanks for listening. 

In this episode, we reminisce about all the good times we shared with our publisher, friend, and ultimate fan of Spooky Season, Joe Bratcher. 

Carrying on the tradition, we discussed two spooky reads that we've been enjoying this year:

A Phantom Lover by Vernon Lee (Creature Publishing)

Three Streets by Yoko Tawada (New Directions)

In this new minisode series, Managing Editor and cover designer extraordinaire, Annar Veröld, divulges all of her secrets to making the most striking book covers for Host Publications. In this first episode of the series, we focus on what it means to be inspired, and how to carry that inspiration through to the finish line. 

Some of the design resources Annar recommends in this episode are: 

Rijks Museum Archives 

Taro As Color Deck by Ithell Colquhoun 

Tantra Song - Tantric Painting from Rajasthan by Frank Andre Jamme

We offer this episode in loving memory of our publisher, mentor, and dear friend, Joe Bratcher III, who loved literature and was a champion of translated works, especially those written and translated by women. We celebrate Women in Translation Month this year in his honor. 

In this episode, we discuss:

Shapeshifter by Alice Paalen Rahon

Extracting the Stone of Madness by Alejandra Pizarnik

Please visit our website where currently, all of our works by women in translation are 50% off! 

This Pride Month, we are celebrating by making donations to the following organizations that support the LGBTQIA+ community: 

The Okra Project - a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People wherever we can reach them.

Out Youth - Out Youth serves Central Texas LGBTQIA+ youth and their allies with programs and services to ensure these promising young people develop into happy, healthy, successful adults.

In this episode, Claire and Annar discuss some of the queer poets they've been reading lately, with a focus on up-and-coming LGBTQ+ poets with debut collections, including a couple of Host Chapbook Prize Winners! 

autobiography of a semiromantic anarchist by mónica teresa ortiz

Mistaken for Loud Comets by lily someson

Punks by John Keene

Wound from the Mouth of a Wound by torrin a. greathouse

Burying the Mountain by Shangyang Fang

In this episode, Host editors Annar and Claire go back to the basics of poetry, to investigate one of the seemingly simplest yet most elusive poetic elements: the line break. 

The poems discussed in this episode come from the following books:

Ariel by Sylvia Plath

Mistaken for Loud Comets by lily someson

Little Girl Blue: Poems by Sequoia Maner

In this episode, Annar and Joe had the chance to sit down with Fernando A. Flores, author of Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, the short story collection that revived Host Publications as we know it after taking a brief hiatus.

We always like to say that Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas is a psychedelic romp through the Rio Grande Valley music scene. It is collection of 10 punk rock fairy-tales about artists and misfits trying to make noise and live forever in the unforgiving landscape of the Rio Grande Valley.

Fernando A. Flores is a writer who grew up in the Rio Grande Valley, near McAllen, Texas. In addition to Death to the Bullshit Artists of South Texas, he is the author of Tears of the Truffle Pig, which was long-listed for the Center for Fiction First Novel Prize, and the forthcoming short story collection, Velleyesque, out May 3rd, 2022.

In this episode, Host editors Claire and Annar, and publisher Joe celebrate National Poetry Month by reading a few poems they've been returning to again and again to find inspiration this month. 

The poems discussed in this episode are:

"Poetry" by John Keene

"Sailing to Byzantium" by W. B. Yeats

"Black Star Line" by Henry Dumas

"Reading Darwish in Vermont" by Zaina Alsous

In this episode, Claire and Annar interview the Spring 2022 Host Publications Chapbook Prize Winner, Maryan Nagy Captan. 

Maryan is a poet, screenwriter and educator living in Austin, Texas. She is a 2021 graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and attended the Disquiet International Literary Conference in 2017 and 2019. Her first book, Copy/Body, was published in 2017 by Empty Set Press and, her second book, Sixteen Rabbits, was the Spring 2022 winner of the Host Publications Chapbook Prize and is now available from Host Publications.

With Maryan, Claire and Annar discuss the poems in Sixteen Rabbits, how Maryan came to poetry as an art form, what it means to be an experimental writer, and much more. 

If you're listening to this episode before March 5th, 2022, please join us in celebrating Maryan at the virtual chapbook launch for Sixteen Rabbits via the Malvern Books YouTube channel.