The Virtual Memories Show

With Three Fifths (Agora), debut author John Vercher explores race and representation in a taut crime novel. We get into Black identity and the notion of 'passing' in America, the origins of Three Fifths and its evolution over a two-decade span, and how John's literary idols led him to the spare prose that carries the book's tension. We also get into his roundabout writing career, how an MFA program doesn't necessarily prepare one for the job-aspects of writing, the decision to place Three Fifths in 1995 (think Rodney King, OJ, and no cell phones or internet), John's martial arts background and how it informs his writing, how he integrated his characters' love of superhero comics into their psychologies, the need to pay it forward, and more. • Follow John on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author & St. John's College tutor Zena Hitz joins the show to talk about her wonderful new book, Lost in Thought: The Hidden Pleasures of an Intellectual Life (Princeton University Press). We get into the nature of learning for its own sake, the corruption of academia and its potential reform, how St. John's prepared us for the world by not preparing us, and why the Newton's Principia is the toughest thing on the SJC curriculum. We also talk about the joy of autodidacts and our shared love of The Peregrine, why she disagrees with the notion that learning-for-its-own-sake is a privilege of the elite, the challenges of leading seminars by Zoom, and how bureaucracy creeps into every system. We also tackle my lightning round of questions for SJC tutors, what she'd add to the curriculum and what she'd subtract, and answer the long-standing question: What is virtue and can it be taught? Follow Zena on Twitter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author & publisher Bill Campbell joins the show to talk about what he's learned from running Rosarium Publishing (and how he accidentally became a publisher). We get into how having a diverse roster of authors and cartoonists is easy if you're willing to look, how independent bookstores generally don't support independent presses, and how work-life balance is something he doesn't even consider. We also talk about the impact of Rosarium's first book, Mothership: Tales from Afrofuturism and Beyond, the continued significance of their 2015 anthology, APB: Artists against Police Brutality, the cognitive dissonance of living in Washington, DC, his upcoming graphic novel about a Klan rally in Pittsburgh and why history equals horror, the challenges of continuing to publish during the pandemic, how lockdown taught him that he's not as antisocial as he thought, and more. • Follow Bill on Twitter and Instagram and follow Rosarium Publishing on Twitter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

The beyond-legendary designer Milton Glaser died on June 26, 2020, on his 91st birthday. To celebrate his life and world-changing career, I've re-posted our 2019 podcast, along with a new introduction. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

I nerd out with author, English professor, and hardcore comics reader Jonathan W. Gray. We talk about how Blackness is represented in American comics (the subject of his next book), how Alan Moore's Swamp Thing changed his life, and how he was teaching comics when there weren't a lot of college courses on comics. We get into the perils and perks of academia, what it's like teaching at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and protesting against police violence, the influence of Kyle Baker's Nat Turner & John Lewis' March on his work, the horrifying question of whether we're actually in the best timeline right now, and plenty more. Follow Jonathan on Twitter • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Herblock Award-winning cartoonist Ruben Bolling joins the show to celebrate 30 years of his comic, Tom The Dancing Bug! We talk about his two new collections, Into the Trumpverse and The Super-Fun-Pak Comix Reader, and how pandemic-uncertainty means you'll need to pre-order those books NOW in order to get 'em. We also get into how Tom The Dancing Bug has evolved over the decades, why he's never drawn himself in a strip (which I think is tied into his regret at using a pseudonym all these years), the benefits of using an open format without recurring characters (for the most part), how Bill Griffith's Zippy the Pinhead blew his mind when he was young, his embarrassment of riches when the blurbs for Into the Trumpverse started coming in, secretly being glad his kids are around so much during the pandemic, why he'd love to get back to making more of his EMU Club series of kids books, and plenty more! Pre-order Into the Trumpverse and The Super-Fun-Pak Comix Reader by June 30, 2020 • Follow Ruben on Twitter and Instagram, and support his work via The Inner Hive • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Designer, artist and writer Keith Henry Brown joins the show to talk about his new kids book, Birth of The Cool: How Miles Davis Found His Sound. We get into the twists and turns of his illustration career, exploring the balancing act of art & commerce in his main role as an art director, the role of jazz in his work, how he started off by achieving his childhood goal of drawing for Marvel Comics, but rapidly realized it wasn't for him, the ongoing evolution of his style, how he discovered his place at the Society of Illustrators, the longform graphic novel he's hoping to create, the issues of race in his career, and more. • Follow Keith on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram• More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Through his work at Publishers Weekly, editor Calvin Reid has been an important advocate for comics and graphic novel publishing for decades. We get into his history with comics and making art, how he began writing about the book publishing world, and the weirdness of having to update the annual retailer survey to reflect the effect of the pandemic on booksellers. Calvin talks about the transformative nature of Black Lives Matter, the lack of diversity in publishing (which he wrote about 25 years ago), and how Black artists are represented in mainstream comics, as well as how wearing a mask helps protects him from COVID, satisfies his superhero fantasies, AND gets him likes on social media. Follow Calvin on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram• More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author Arthur Hoyle joins the show to talk about his new book, Mavericks, Mystics, and Misfits: Americans Against the Grain (Sunbury Press), in which profiles of American figures help illustrate the paradoxes and aspirations of a nation. We get into how the book grew out of the concept of the exemplar put forth by Henry Miller (the subject of Arthur's first book), his vision of America and how the florid language of the founding fathers is like PR for a damaging product, and how his selection of biographical subjects in MM&M represents the diversity of America in its ethnicity and geographic spread. We also get into climate change and rampant capitalism, his practice of "first draft, best draft", the fascist seed of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, how the pandemic scrambled his trip to Patagonia and led to an odyssey to get back to Southern California, his next book about the tension artists face between the muse & the mundane, our various ideas of how to treat Henry Miller in film & fiction, and more! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Translator and director Philip Boehm joins the show fresh off winning his second Helen & Kurt Wolff Translator's Prize. We talk about his prize-winning translation of Christine Wunnicke's The Fox & Dr. Shimamura (New Directions), and the research and challenges that went into bringing the eerie historical novel to life in English, then get into his time in Poland in the '80s, how it shaped his ideas on the role of the arts in society, and how he had to smuggle his work out of the country, the differences between translating for the page vs. the stage, his role as Artistic Director of Upstream Theater, the time he pranked a publisher with a fake letter from Kafka to Milena, the pressure of translating canonical works and the joy of meeting & befriending authors he works on, the parallels between Iron Curtain countries in the '80s & America today, how every theatrical staging is an act of translation, regardless of the source language, why German is like Lego while Polish is like autumnal rustling, how he's dealing with Pandemic Life in Texas, and more! • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal