The Virtual Memories Show

Cartoonist, illustrator & writer Summer Pierre checks in from Highland Falls, NY. We talk about the importance of work & parenting routines, keeping sane with freelance work, making diary comics, diving into National Poetry Month, the joy of sending & receiving letters (and getting a recent letter from Seth), crying at the supermarket, having the impulse to drive down to New York City just to cruise around the empty streets, and more. Follow Summer on Twitter and Instagram • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

New Yorker cartoonist Emily Flake checks in from Brooklyn. We talk about the challenges of making gag comics in the COVID era (and finding jokes outside of Zoom conferences and toilet-paper hoarding), adapting her Shitshow and Nightmares live events to an online audience, stocking up on art supplies but worrying about the pharma supply chain from India, conning her kid into a reading contest as a way to get some quiet time, missing even the awkward-est of hugs, and more. Follow Emily on Twitter and Instagram, and look for upcoming livestreams of Shitshow and Nightmares • Also, go read her new essay about enchantment and middle age, Molly and the Unicorn • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Photojournalist Kyle Cassidy checks in from Philadelphia. We talk about his new photo series, Between Us and Catastrophe (recently excerpted at Hidden City), where he's photographing and interviewing (at a distance) the healthcare workers, essential personnel and volunteers who are keeping the world going during the pandemic. We talk about the awful choices that nurses have to make, the technical challenges of the series, his aggravation at neighbors holding porch parties, the book on Icelandic sweaters that he'd love to get back to, his decades-old flash that's been waiting for this moment, his fundamental belief in the goodness of humanity, and more. Follow Kyle on Twitter and Smugmug • Listen to our most recent full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Translator Alta L. Price joins the show to talk about co-curating the 2020 (now 2021) edition of Festival Neue Literatur with Tess Lewis. We talk about the bureaucratic snafu that led her into a life of translation, how she fights the urge to revise translations between editions, the differences between translating a classic vs. a contemporary work, her work for gender parity among translators and translated authors, and how editors serve as gatekeepers that inadvertently perpetuate disparities. We also get into how studying printmaking brought her an understanding of what a work of art is and does as it shifts media, her literary ambassadorship of Chicago, how she overcame perfection-paralysis, and plenty more. This episode was intended to promote the Festival Neue Literatur, which was to be held April 23-26, 2020 in NYC but has been postponed to 2021; I decided to retain the portions about that to remind us of The Before Times. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Last time Eva Hagberg checked in, she'd just gotten her positive COVID-19 test. Three weeks later, she fills us in on the most harrowing medical experience of a life filled with harrowing medical experiences (seriously, read her memoir). We talk about her attempts to cope with the virus without going to the hospital, the system-wide assault the virus conducts on body and mind, how the experience may change the pandemic novel she'd started writing in The Before Times, and more. Follow Eva on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and her own podcast, Recoup • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Essayist and journalist (and one of my very first pod-guests!) Jane Borden checks in from LA. We talk about memoir-metamorphosis, her recent Vanity Fair piece on the art of making art during a plague, the solace of deep time, working for Tom Wolfe, the Ishion Hutchinson essay that recently blew her mind, the intertwining of arts criticism and memoir, whether it's healthy to try to interpret the pandemic through metaphor, rereading her Joseph Campbell books and reflecting on her marginalia from her 20s, and more. Follow Jane on Twitter • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Writer and critic Whitney Matheson checks in from Brooklyn, after a multi-week bout with COVID-19 (her doctor thinks she's past it, but still dealing with after-effects). We talk about the irony of her being debilitated just when the world needs pop culture recommendations most, her best Zoom angles, the amount of good, bad and ugly art that will come out of this period, the restaurant she misses most, the TV show she's meaning to catch up on, home-schooling a 7-year-old kid while trying not to pass out, and how happy she is to have a birthday coming up next week. Follow Whitney on Twitter and Instagram, subscribe to her weekly pop-culture e-mail and get exclusive content like her comics, short stories and more at her Patreon. Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Cartoonist and playwright Dean Haspiel checks in from Brooklyn (home of his superhero, The Red Hook!). We talk about making art (good, bad or ugly) during the plague, finding yourself while putting your life on hold, how our social norms may change after the pandemic subsides, the virtue of online comics, bingeing on 1970s comics by Steve Gerber, feeling sad (but not self-pity) when his play, The War of Woo, had to be postponed last month, and more. • Nominate season 3 of The Red Hook, STARCROSS, for Best Webcomic at the Ringo Awards • Follow Dean on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to his e-newsletter • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author Christopher Brown checks in from the edgelands of East Austin, TX. We talk about the final edits of his upcoming novel, Failed State (which is part of the universe of his previous novels, Tropic of Kansas and Rule of Capture), and how the border between dystopia and utopia are kinda permeable. We also get into his amazing weekly e-mail, Field Notes, nature's reclamation projects, the potential inflection point of the current moment, why he's trying to translate German and has taken up the lute, the midwest road trip he's planning, and more. Follow Chris on Twitter and Instagram, and subscribe to Field Notes • Listen to our most recent full-length podcast • More info at our site • Find all our COVID Check-In episodes • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal

Author Matt Ruff checks in from Seattle and we talk about his brand-new novel, 88 Names. We get into what gaming and the internet reveal about human character(s), how he handles VR nausea and whether VR measures up to what Neuromancer semisorta promised us, the pros and cons of a virtual book tour (including an upcoming one on Altspace VR on 4/17/20), the fluidity of identity in the virtual landscape, the bookstores he can't wait to get back to, post-pandemic, the origins of empathy, and more. • More info at our site • Check out our 2017 podcast and the rest of The COVID-19 Sessions • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patreon or Paypal