1storypod

A BENCH IN EAST RIVER PARK — Solstice-eve sitdown with legendary poet and novelist Eileen Myles (b. 1949), author of Chelsea Girls (1994), Cool For You (2000), Inferno (2010), Afterglow (2017), Evolution (2018), For Now (2020), and other books. Pod contents: 4 min - Marija Gimbutas. 9 min - Egyptian book of the dead / Afterglow (2017) / reincarnation. 11 min - Nonverbal communication. 15 min - Zola / writing about work. 19 min - “pathetic literature" / loser narrators. 24 min - readings. 30 min - the proletariat v. bourgeoisie now 34 min - east river park. 39 min - mistrust of “fiction.” 40 min - male v. Female lust. 46 min - orality / the beats / Kerouac. 49 min - Henry Miller. 54 min - rocks / grounding. 58 min - Transparent. 1 hr 7 min - the quiet place. 1 hr 9 min - the Northman. 1 hr 10 min - “the show about the show.” 1 hr 12 min- Valleyesque Fernando Flores. 1 hr 15 min - writing about the dead. 1 hr 18 min - Gerard de Nerval / ghosts. http://1storyhaus.com/pod/69-eileen-myles

INWOOD — Miles Lagoze is a writer, director, and U.S. Marine veteran. He served as combat camera from 2008–2013. He is the director of Combat Obscura (2019), a documentary about his time out in Afghanistan, and the author of a forthcoming book, out next year. Combat Obscura trailer: https://youtu.be/pkaTGGwwvSI Book excerpt: https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2021/11/18/dreams-in-first-person-shooter/ Pod contents: 0 min - Die4Guy playboi carti 3 min - His time in Okinawa / K2. 7 min - Almost Transparent Blue (1976) by Ryū Murakami. 10 min - Why Miles enlisted. 14 min - War movies. 19 min - Why we were in the middle east. 22 min - Incest (1999) Christine Angot. 24 min - Romping along the highway (primate mode). 28 min - Studs Lonigan (1960) by James T. Farrell (the OG Fuccboi). 34 min - Fiction vs nonfiction. 41 min - Doing college after going to war. 44 min - Who is the enemy. 50 min - The ability to laugh at yourself. 57 min - Bringing light to the darkness. Sean Thor Conroe is the author of Fuccboi: a novel (2022): https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/sean-thor-conroe/fuccboi/9780316394819/

BERLIN / NYC — Rob Doyle, author of Threshold (2020), Autobibliography (2021), Here Are The Young Men (2014) and This Is the Ritual (2016) on travel, life in Berlin, Bolaño, Kerouac, publishing, Nietzsche, and quitting drinking. Sean Thor Conroe is the author of Fuccboi (2022).

EAST MIDLANDS / NYC — Jake Hanrahan is a conflict reporter and journalist from East Midlands, England. He hosts the war podcast Popular Front. He is the author of Gargoyle (2021), a collection of his essays. He’s a fucking real one. GARGOYLE: Reporting from frontlines, jail cells, and trap houses: https://www.amazon.com/Gargoyle-Reporting-frontlines-cells-houses/dp/B092PG6K13 POPULAR FRONT: https://www.patreon.com/popularfront/posts 3 min - on Ukraine / Hoods Hoods Clan. 8 min - on Fuccboi. 14 min - on the Kazinskiite pine tree community from Gargoyle (2021). ​19 min - on Combat Obscura. 23 min - shitty labor jobs. 29 min - anti-snobbery media. 32 min - on working w Andrew Callaghan. 38 min - the state of things in Ukraine. 42 min - when things are beyond theory. 56 min - Hanrahan’s come up. 58 min - on reading and writing. 1 hr 3 min - on Scrapping. 1 hr 7 min - on Sincerity. 1 hr 13 min - on bouncing back. 1 hr 23 min - Survivor (2010) Chuck Palahniuk. 1 hr 26 min - Seek (2002) by Denis Johnson, Rainbow Stories (1992) by William T Vollmann, Hella Nation (2010) by Evan Wright. Sean Thor Conroe is the author of Fuccboi: A novel: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/sean-thor-conroe/fuccboi/9780316394819/

JERSEY CITY / NYC — Bud Smith is the author of Teenager, out now from Vintage. He is also the author of Double Bird (2018), Work (2017), Calm Face (2016), F250 (2014), and Tollbooth (2013), among other books. He is also a good friend. This convo is from 9 May 2022, 2 nights ago, the night before his novel Teenager dropped. Bless. TEENAGER: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/679124/teenager-by-bud-smith/ 1 min - pod start 5 min - “the New Jersey devil” 9 min - Don Quixote / picaresque 24 min - should novels be educational 28 min - “reading as prayer/meditation” 30 min - on working on Teenager w Gian 57 min - on how Teenager ended up where it did 1 hr 1 min - on Bud’s day job 1hr 15 min - on Salinger 1 hr 33 min - on Gordon Lish / carver / ford Sean Thor Conroe is the author of Fuccboi: A Novel: https://www.littlebrown.com/titles/sean-thor-conroe/fuccboi/9780316394819/

COLLEGE PARK MD — Jordan Castro is the editor of New York Tyrant Magazine and the author of The Novelist, forthcoming from Soft Skull in 2022. We spoke this past Sunday, 13 June 2021, at his spot in Maryland after I drove down from NYC to hang with him a couple days. Jordan and I got especially close over the past couple months after losing our friend, the editor and publisher Gian DiTrapano. Jordan also helped me a lot in the aftermath of the passing my girlfriend, the writer Kyra Baldwin, not long before the passing of Gian this past March.

OXFORD, MS / NYC — Nico Walker is the author of the novel Cherry (Knopf, 2018). He was born in Georgia and grew up in Las Vegas and Cleveland. He served as a medic in the Iraq war. And worked with the late Gian DiTrapano on Cherry while in prison in the mid 2010s. Here is a recent piece he wrote on Gian: https://www.bookforum.com/culture/giancarlo-ditrapano-1974-2021-24463 Recent collection on Gian in Muumuu House I contributed to: http://muumuuhouse.com/gian.11may2021.html Lit hub article I mentioned on Cherry’s covers: https://lithub.com/the-trouble-with-designing-a-book-when-its-author-is-in-jail/ POD CONTENTS 7 min - pod start 10 min - Gian’s biggest grievance w the game 17 min - expert talk / literary pedantry 21 min - stuff people read in prison to entertain themselves 24 min - the elitism of Literature and linguistic classism 27 min - books were initially about the democratization of thought 29 min - Lazarillo de Tormez 30 min - Canterbury tales 33 min - Don Quixote / Battle of Lepanto (1571) 38 min - parallel between Cervantes and Nico 41 min - McClanahan / we just do what we see on TV 41.5 min - the solution to the big house / indie divide 42 min - Nico’s experience w Gian v. Knopf 50 min - are you gonna put the work in 51 min - no one does anything alone 54 min - Marie Calloway 59 min - if no backlash is an artwork doing anything 1 hr 1 min - what is to be done 1 hr 3 min - the difficulty / importance of dialogue 1 hr 7 min - we say who we are through our speech 1 hr 10 min - flannery O’Connor / *James Joyce quote correction - "I am a creature driven and derided by vanity" 1 hr 13 min - Hill William 1 hr 20 min - infallible narrators 1 hr 23 min - how to keep going when shit gets more fucked than you ever coulda imagined 1 hr 24 min - tear the bandaid off .. just say it 1 hr 28 min - on war 1 hr 35 min - the contradictions of war 1 hr 40 min - Nico’s day to day now / Rachael Rabbit White http://1storyhaus.com/index.html

TORONTO / NYC — Brad Phillips is a writer and artist from Toronto. He is the author of Essays and Fictions (Tyrant, 2018). I enjoyed this book a lot. I felt it was courageous, funny, intimate, deceptively sweet, and formally inventive. Here is a link to the book: https://www.nytyrant.com/products/essays-and-fictions-by-brad-phillips . Here is a link to the recent story he published on Muumuu House that we reference: http://muumuuhouse.com/bp.03feb2021.html . Here is a link to a NYT thing shouting out his instagram (https://www.instagram.com/brad___phillips/?hl=en ): https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/06/arts/design/artists-instagram-coronavirus.html POD CONTENTS: 2 min - pod start / how Brad prepped for this pod 7 min - how Brad started painting / doing the art 10 min - how Brad feels about Essays and Fictions now 13 min - “Death is the sanction of everything that the storyteller can tell.” - Benjamin 15 min - “Write from the end of the world” 16 min - desperation vs self sabotage 19 min - whether or not “doing better” having written the book 21 min - things Brad does to “do better” (physically) 24 min - dealing w trauma thru the body 27 min - do it for the ones who need it 31 min - “boundaries” in autofiction 35 min - why writing presented by a narrator who share’s author’s name interesting 39 min - deja vu / “intuition is god” 42 min - writing is less about writing a lot than it is about intuiting when it’s Time to write 45 min - is human connection possible 47 min - everything is performance and that’s ok 52 min - the self is a story so I don’t feel weird writing stories about a self I am now 56 min - making yourself a dumb animal to be ok 59 min - “write for pleasure publish for money” pushkin 1 hr - to share or not to share 1 hr 3 min - is writing helpful 1 hr 4 min - Danny from “The Barista the Rooster & Me” 1 hr 6 min - drugs # Sean Thor Conroe lives in Harlem. http://1storyhaus.com/index.html

NYC — Shy Watson is a poet and novel-writer. Her new book Horror Vacui (2021) dropped last month from House of Vlad. She is also the author of Cheap Yellow (CCM, 2018). She lives in NYC. Her book: https://houseofvlad.bigcartel.com/product/horror-vacui-poems-and-other-writings-by-shy-watson # CONTENTS CONTENTS 3 min - pelvic health issues 7 min - Philly connections 10 min - where shy grew up 13 min - why shy moved so much in 20s 16 min - how / when HV written / pubbed 19 min - Eileen Myles 21 min - the novel shy workin on 23 min - Convenience store woman by sayaka murata / work by Bud smith 24 min - Sam pink book cover 26 min - ‘autofiction ethicality’ rant / justification 27 min - on writing intimately about Life 30:30 - on religion 34 min - reading god into shy’s books 37 min - on spirituality 39 min - diy sigil 45 min - writing as seduction 47 min - sometimes you gotta turn on the reader 51 min - important for writing and life to get out about 54 min - becoming your own boy 58 min - sillyboys 59 min - crypto 1 hr 2 min - mors tua vita mea 1 hr 4 min - new moon

TORONTO / NYC — Sheila Heti is the author of the short story collection the Middle Stories (2001), the short novel Ticknor (2005), the philosophy book the Chairs Are Where The People Go (2011), co-written by Misha Glouberman, How Should A Person Be? (2012), and Motherhood (2018). She also co-edited the collection Women in Clothes (2014). And wrote the intro to the new release of this Virginia Woolf essay, How Should One Read A Book? (2020). Her next book, Pure Colour, is coming out in January 2022. I first encountered Sheila’s writing in late 2014, when I tore through How Should A Person Be? in a night. I’ve since done a handful of pods on her books, so this is really exciting for me, it’s been a long time coming. We recorded this late last week. Sheila Heti lives in Toronto. Here is a link to her website, with links to all her books: http://www.sheilaheti.com Sheila's podcast "Podcast With Raisins": https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/podcast-with-raisins/id1193833547 CONTENTS 8 min - pod start 12 min - Sheila’s current project 15 min - the book isn’t finished till it’s separate from you 16 min - me tryna turn real life into an Art Idea 20 min - How Ticknor different but also similar to her other books 24 min - friendship/angels 25 min - how I first encountered Sheila's writing 36 min - on walking / Richard Serra 40 min - “art should be taken off the pedestal” 42 min - Middle Stories reactions / why she wrote Ticknor 45 min - publishing right after 9/11 50 min - Sheila outing me for being in school lolol 55 min - Malcolm gladwell story 1 hr 4 min - coin stuff / mysticism 1 hr 7 min - on God 1 hr 11 min - on Nietzsche 1 hr 12 min - “the great writers rearrange your brain” 1 hr 13 min - Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Martin Buber 1 hr 16 - “who decides that something is good is the Culture / having supporters” / Wittgenstein 1 hr 21 min - “the person who loves a book is the one who’s right about it” / criticism 1 hr 28 min - on cigs / tobacco Intro song: https://soundcloud.com/yeums/thank-you-master Related episode - solo rant on Motherhood (1.3.2018): https://soundcloud.com/1storypod/29-family-failure-and-procreation-in-motherhood-2018-by-sheila-heti-1storypod-with-st-conroe Sean Thor Conroe lives in Harlem.