The Virtual Memories Show

Jonathan Ames returns to celebrate his fantastic new crime novel, A PAST WITHOUT PICTURES (Mysterious Press). We talk about his obsession with pulp fiction, how he found the character of Maria Cole and her tortured relationship with her father after setting out to write a companion to You Were Never Really Here, how hard (and rewarding) it is to craft page-turning prose, and how he compares the experience of reading Death in Venice to reading a Parker novel. We get into how his Buddhist interests are under the surface of this book and are on the surface of his Happy Doll novels (including the one he's working on!), how writing is a form of seeing, and how good writing helps the reader create a movie in their mind. We also discuss his samsara of not reaching out to people, the bit from Our Town that guides him to be more loving and present in the world, the shock of seeing his lengthy letters from the '80s and '90s, why LA is so weird for me, why he reads different translations of the Tao, how Marc Maron gives us a model of how to learn to listen, and more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With his new book, LIKE SWIMMERS (New York Review Comics), Dash Shaw brings us a supernatural murder mystery set in COVID-era Richmond, VA. We talk about how he uses that story to explore memory, identity, art, marriage, and the social breakdown in America, how a murder mystery helped him reflect on the losses of COVID, LIKE SWIMMERS' pamphlet comic-feel and how that pay tribute to a lost friend who liked very different comics than what Dash usually makes, and how writing this story in the middle of COVID helped him capture details he'd never have recalled after the fact. We get into how we uncover different versions or aspects of the people we've lost, why he eschews three-act structures to find new shapes of storytelling, his use of Richmond as a character (and the very bizarre Kroeger that he couldn't fit into the book), and what it was like to go jogging in 2020 when there were snipers on rooftops. We also talk about his peripatetic project management style, what he thinks about Roy Lichtenstein's art and what it means to love cliches, getting inspiration from an unfinished Winsor McCay cartoon, working with New York Review Comics for several books, how coloring his comics is almost as tough as writing them, and more. Follow Dash on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Five-Timer Club Alert! Essayist Phillip Lopate rejoins the show as we celebrate his wonderful new book, A WASHINGTON IRVING SKETCH BOOK (Princeton)! We talk about the origins of the biography, incl. how he wound up with a 12-volume set of Washington Irving's complete works, his choice to write the bio in the form of sketches, how Irving as America's first professional writer is a precursor/trailblazer for Phillip's career, and how well Irving understood the fickleness of literary fame. We get into 19th Century American lit and its tensions with Europe, Irving's fixation on Spain, why he wrote under pseudonyms even late in his career, and how Phillip's affection for Irving deepened over the course of the book, We also discuss why personal essayists tend not to write autobiographies and how Phillip's complicated relationship with his brother, Leonard Lopate, how Leonards's death spurred him to write a memoir, his passion for visiting writers' homes (including Irving's Sunnyside and Montaigne's tower), his career-long goal of passing along the writing that's worth keeping (whether through teaching, editing essay anthologies, or appearing multiple times on some guy's podcast), our shared exhilaration over the Knicks' championship (and how we can't get excited about baseball this season), and a lot more. More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

"There are ways to downsize a college, but with Hampshire it felt more like a hollowing-out." Our latest installment of The Hampshire Tapes features a conversation with Ida Kao (F18) about having a ringside seat for Hampshire College's decline. We talk about how how she's trying to preserve the school's spirit by co-curating the Post-Hampshire project, what it was like trying to pursue an education in the face of Hampshire's financial crisis and COVID, the ups and downs of editing The Omen during those times, her exploration of The Omen's archives how it led to a nostalgia for the Hampshire before her time, and how she recognized pretty early on that some of Hampshire's troubles weren't fixable (at least not by sit-ins). We also get into Hampshire's stabs at student government (see her Div III), the institutions that came and went before her arrival (more Div III)and what that said about ahistoricism on campus, whether she felt short-changed by her time there, and more. Follow Ida on Bluesky and learn more about the Post-Hampshire project • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

"The core Hampshire experience was figuring out how to do things for myself and figuring out how to excite other people about what I wanted to do." It's time for the first installment of The Hampshire Tapes! Halstead York (F88) joins the show to talk about his experience at Hampshire College, how the spirit of the school and its grand experiment of student-driven education has stuck with him all these years, how the school's structure taught him how to pitch projects, how the cover of an unstructured "hippie-trippy" college (my words) masked intense competitiveness and the need to be a self-starter, how reflecting on his time there has helped him maintain his techno-utopianism, and plenty more. Follow Halstead on Letterboxd, Bluesky and Instagram, and subscribe to The Inflection Cut podcast • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With her amazing new book, CAROUSEL: An Essay On Seeing (Yale University Press), Sarah Minor offers a multi-threaded exploration — lecture, memoir, and art criticism — of how we see and are seen, how our language changes with our vantage points, how all these screens are changing human consciousness (and physiology). We talk about the history of the panorama painting and how it presages today's phone-panopticon, the COVID-era constraints that sparked the book (and the other constraints she needs for writing), and how she struggled with a conventional literary nonfiction structure for Carousel after years of crafting visual essays, then found its shape and voice after a live reading. We get into the comfort of white space, the humor of the Bayeux Tapestry (not a tapestry), the benefits of having a mother who was a late-breaking medievalist, and what happened when a student heard her read from Carousel and asked, "How do you balance historical context with reader fatigue?" We talk about how (some) students prefer lectures over discussion and how she almost made it through college without reading a contemporary writer, her shadow-performance collaboration and why it's important to have artistic offshoots, and more. Follow Sarah on Bluesky and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With her debut poetry collection, OFFERINGS FOR ORDINARY GODS (Clash Books), Ali Trotta brings myth, magick, tarot, and ritual to bear on the eternal & primal struggle of women. We talk about those roots and how tarot and ancient myth inspired her work, where tarot began for her — '90s, The Craft — and how past guest Katelan Foisy resparked her interest and showed her new depths in the cards, and her focus on revising ancient myths to retell the stories of wronged women like Persephone, Medusa, and Dido. We get into how she feels at seeing her work collected and how to look at her development as a poet without cringing at her younger selves, how everything is fair game and poetry can serve as exorcism, and how confession can be deeply coded in a poem. We also discuss the teacher who gave her the tools to read poetry deeply, her Very Online-ness and how she's built relationships and writer communities online (and how it's good to be part of the Group-Chat), her online #tinypoem flurries and how rockstar she felt when someone got a tattoo of one on their arm, the project(s) she'd love to write, and more. PLUS: She reads a few of her poems and gives me my second tarot reading of the summer! Follow Ali on Bluesky, Instagram and Tumblr, and subscribe to her newsletter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

Let's celebrate/commemorate America's independence with an amazing new double book, DECLARATION ILLUSTRATED / EMANCIPATION ILLUSTRATED (Drawn & Quarterly). R. Sikoryak rejoins the show to talk about adapting foundational American documents (verbatim!) with a mind-blowing array of comic art parodies, ranging from the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers to Jump Start to Check, Please! to Thanos! We talk about how this project spun out of his CONSTITUTION ILLUSTRATED in 2020, why he decided to include the Emancipation Proclamation and the Gettysburg Address alongside the Declaration of Independence, how he gave himself some pretty strict rules about which artists and characters he could and couldn't use, including not re-using artists he used in his Constitution (which meant employing 200 different artists' styles over the course of these books), and his goal of trying to bring the whole history of American comics into these books. We get into what it's all taught him about America, the ways these documents show how America changed, why he doesn't take offense at being a called a rip-off artist, and why he conceives of these books like a quilt. We also discuss whether he's more sensitive about parodying art by living artists or dead ones, why he wants to get back to comics-parody adaptations of classic books and plays, the ways that access to comprehensive digital comics archives is both good and bad for his work, the artists he wishes could have included in these books, why he brought in many African-American artists and characters in the Emancipation portion of the book, but still found room for Barney Google & Snuffy Smith, the page that almost broke him (okay, it was his Emil Ferris parody), his series of 8-page comics stories for Tom Hanks' first novel (!), and a lot more. Follow Bob on Instagram and Bluesky • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

After a 12-year Virtual Memoriesgap, Katie Skelly is back to celebrate her fantastic new graphic novel, HEAVEN (Fantagraphics)! But that's not all: she's also got the Bad Girl Tarot II (Kickstarter closing July 16, 2026), her horror comics anthology, Viscere, and the Thick Lines podcast! We talk about how she restructured her life and creativity post-lockdown, how she wound up marrying Jaime Hernandez, moving to LA, abandoning the Mets, and finding a community of cartoonists (spoiler: community is the thread that runs through Katie's art and life), the funny tweet about The Weeknd that inspired HEAVEN, why she designed this new tarot deck to be like a prop for a movie you'd want to live in, and why she didn't learn from my example and avoid making her own podcast. We get into how writing Ed Piskor's obituary broke her, and the episode in Ed's life that she takes as a cautionary note, the festival that drew her into the comics world, how she measures herself against her yearly Nabokov read, why she's pretty much done with social media, the flight delay that led to her next comics project, and more! PLUS, Katie reads my tarot as we talk about what it'll take for me to finish my book! Follow Katie on Instagram, and subscribe to her Substack and the Thick Lines podcast (co-hosted by Sally Madden) • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter

With his amazing new book, THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music (WW Norton), author Colin Asher explores how the criminal justice system changed the course of twentieth century music. We talk about how Elmo Hope's Sounds from Rikers Island album inspired the book, how he chose the five artists to focus on — Huddie "Lead Belly" Ledbetter, Elmo Hope, Johnny Cash, Ike White, and Tupac Shakur —, the history of the carceral state, criminality and the popular images of Black and white "outlaw" artists, and how many artists' careers were shaped, derailed, inspired by prisons. We get into the tightrope act of using Johnny Cash as a counterpoint to the racial dynamics of the book (as well as the work Cash did for prison reform), why he had to close the book with the story of Tupac and his mother, Afeni Shakur, and how hip-hop developed in response to America's mass incarceration movement, how the philosophy of incarceration shifted from rehabilitation to punishment, Musicambia's work to bring music education into prisons, and what it means to pursue the arts for personal growth, even when you're on death row. We also discuss how some arts writing can suck the joy out of the arts, why he prefers discussing art in relation to society rather than in relation to other works of art, why he made playlists for The Midnight Special, how playing vinyl records makes music a choice instead of wallpaper, the "burn the world down and replace it with an utopia" phase of his youth, the secret origins of his writing career, his dream projects (incl. the novel he's noodling on), and more. Follow Colin on Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Stripe, Patreon, or Paypal, and subscribe to our e-newsletter