Wake Island

Diarmuid Hester is a radical cultural historian, writer, and performer based in Cambridge, England. Diarmuid grew up in County Kilkenny, Ireland. He studied English and French at University College Dublin, before coming to the UK to study for Master’s degrees in English (University of Sussex) and philosophy (Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy). He received his PhD in English literature from the University of Sussex. Diarmuid has held research fellowships at New York University, the Library of Congress, and the University of Oxford. He is currently a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in English at the University of Cambridge.

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius

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California brings out the fucking worst in people. Makes them junkies, whores, killers - failed saints, predatory sinners. Must be something in the land or maybe the water. Something old and evil. Waiting. The Magician is an incantatory trip to this cursed heart of darkness. A modern horror tale of sexual violence and deep psychological harm. Unflinchingly narrated in spare, economic prose climaxing in hallucinatory brutality, Christopher Zeischegg has conjured a dark fable of the American dream as it slides into unending nightmare.

Christopher Zeischegg is a writer, musician, and filmmaker who spent eight years working in the adult industry as performer, Danny Wylde. He is the author of four books, Come to my Brother, The Wolves that Live in Skin and Space, Body to Job, and The Magician, and has contributed to The Feminist Porn Book, Best Sex Writing, Coming Out Like a Porn Star, Split Lips, and a variety of digital publications, such as Somesuch and The Nervous Breakdown. 

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius

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J.J. Anselmi is the author of Doomed to Fail: The Incredibly Loud History of Doom, Sludge, and Post-metal; and Heavy: A Memoir of Wyoming, BMX, and Heavy Fucking Music. He’s played drums in several heavy bands, including In the Company of Serpents and Former Worlds. He’s currently the drummer of Drainage, a sludgy metalcore band from Long Beach, California. 

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius

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Today on Wake Island, I’ll be talking to educator and photographer Tom Griggs. I recorded this conversation with Tom on April 3. In it, Tom and I talk our way through the atmosphere generated by COVID-19 as a way to synthesize its significance and its aesthetics. We get into the unveiling of a public life post coronavirus, the sense of theater forming on the streets, our social reliance on telecommunications, reality bleeding into dreams, nature’s role in redefining society, and the blind spots being created by the lack of media narratives. Find out more about Tom at tomgriggs.net  

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius 

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Chelsea Hodson is the author of the book of essays Tonight I'm Someone Else and the chapbook Pity the Animal. She teaches at Bennington College and she co-founded the Mors Tua Vita Mea workshop in Sezze Romano, Italy. 

I Could Live Without Speaking is available to read at Hazlitt

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius

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Harley’s memoir, Hard-Core: Life of My Own, is about growing up a feral street kid and coming of age amid the wreckage of old New York City—a now long-gone landscape of gangs, violence, decay, and, of course, the Cro-Mags. Harley’s book is not only a recounting of his story, but a reminder of what pre-gentrified New York City was like at the height of its cultural and artistic zeitgeist. It’s also about betrayal and reinvention without self-pity, told simply and straightforwardly in the author’s own voice. 

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius. 

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From the Ted Talk stage to Wake Island, today on the show we have social critic, lecturer, and author, James Howard Kunstler. His books include: The Long Emergency, The Geography of  Nowhere, and Too Much Magic: Wishful Thinking, Technology, and the Fate of the Nation. James has lectured at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, and MIT, to name only a few. His books are widely read and discussed by architectural critics, urban planners, economists and techno sceptics. You can subscribe to his blog, Clusterfuck Nation, at  kuntsler.com, where he also has a truly thoughtful and engaging podcast called KunstlerCast. '

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius 

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Matthew Stokoe, the king of the neo-noir murder mystery novel, is on Wake Island today. If I had to pick one writers whose new books I’m most excited for and who consistently delivers the page-turners, it’s Stokoe. His perpetually blood-soaked vision of Los Angeles’ underbelly ranks alongside Raymond Chandler’s The Long Goodbye as quintessential. Stokoe’s novel High Life delivers crime, corruption, and power violence as a totally coherent and addictive reading experience.  

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius 

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Wake Island was on a short hiatus for the holidays but today we’re back at it with author Steve Anwyll. Even though we met for the first time the day before recording this episode Steve feels like someone I’ve known forever. Steve’s debut novel Welfare is about a high school student who escapes his dysfunctional homelife to drift alone with no safety net but the help of government aid. Although the delivery is straight forward there’s an elegance to the way Welfare unfolds. I also found Steve’s prose to be quietly poetic and at times unexpected. If you’re a certain type of degenerate I think you’ll get a kick out of this conversation. 

Theme music by Joseph E. Martinez of Junius 

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