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Episode 143: Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah

Release Date: 08/02/2023

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Writer Sarah Gailey returns to the show for a discussion about their new novella, Have You Eaten? This serialized story follows four young queer characters as they traverse an America in the process of collapse, taking care of each other along the way. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about experimentation in fiction, vine-ripened tomatoes, cooking as an act of care, and what apocalypse means. Then for the second segment, we talked about why we re-recorded the second segment, sin-flattening and high-control groups, the necessity of interpersonal repair. (Episode recorded September 27,...

Episode 154: Rachel Edelman

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In the opening poem of Rachel Edelman’s debut collection, Dear Memphis, the speaker returns to their home city after a long time away, traversing a landscape that is both familiar and foreign, a place to which she belongs but also doesn’t. Over the course of the collection, Edelman asks questions about heritage and inheritance; about exile, diaspora, and migration; about home; about marginalization and privilege, oppression and complicity. In our conversation, we talked about acts of care, the importance of self-criticality, what poems do, and the necessary and the possible. Then for the...

Episode 153: Jennifer Baker

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Writer, editor, and podcaster Jennifer Baker’s debut YA novel, Forgive Me Not, imagines a near-future America in which the juvenile criminal justice system has been “reformed” to allow young people to undergo grueling Trials instead of incarceration. It’s an incisive and powerful story about carceral justice, as well as a moving coming-of-age and family story. In our conversation we talked about writing about serious topics for younger readers, how she approached writing her characters, and why it was important for her to focus on systems rather than individual innocence or guilt. Then...

Episode 152: Rachel Lyon

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Writer Rachel Lyon returns to the show to discuss her latest novel, Fruit of the Dead, a contemporary retelling of the Persephone myth in which a young woman is seduced by wealth and privilege in a story about addiction, class, sexual assault, and power. In our conversation, we talked about how malleable identity can be during adolescence and how that informed how she wrote the character of Cory, how family members do and don’t see each other, and why it was important for the characters in this story to have agency. Then for the second segment we talked about stages of life. (Recorded June...

BONUS: Hey, It's Me — Episode 1: What Are We Doing?

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Introducing Hey, It's Me! I'm happy to announce a new podcast from me and my friend Rachel Zucker, Hey, It's Me! Here's the first episode as a bonus for KTCO listeners. Enjoy! Subscribe:

Episode 151: KTCO Book Club - Whereas (with Amorak Huey)

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For this KTCO Book Club conversation, poet Amorak Huey joins me to discuss Layli Long Soldier’s 2017 poetry collection, Whereas. In our conversation, we talked about the way the poems confront language, what language means in the context of forced assimilation, and how the poems engage with both history and contemporary reality. (Recorded March 26, 2024) Subscribe: | | | | | Support: | | Connect: | | | | Show Notes: Purchase Whereas: | | Episode Credits Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa Music: Transcription: Shea...

Episode 150: KTCO Book Club - The Man Who Could Move Clouds (with Martha Crawford)

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For this KTCO Book Club conversation, I’m joined by writer and group facilitator Martha Crawford for a discussion about Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s 2023 memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds. In our conversation, Martha and I talked about different ways of knowing, how to read across cultures without being extractive, storytelling as healing, and what identity means in the context of forgetting. (Recorded March 9, 2024) Subscribe: | | | | | Support: | | Connect: | | | | Show Notes: Purchase The Man Who Could Move Clouds, by...

Episode 149: José Pablo Iriarte

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Writer and friend José Pablo Iriarte returns to the show to discuss their debut middle-grade novel, Benny Ramirez and the Nearly Departed. In our conversation, we talked about building stories without antagonists, writing for young readers, and what makes coming-of-age stories such an enduring phenomenon. Then for the second segment, we talked about the importance of storytelling in creating empathy and connection in our incredibly divided society. (Recorded April 6, 2024.) Subscribe: | | | | | Support: | | Connect: | | | | Show...

Episode 148: Sarah Rose Etter

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Sarah Rose Etter is a writer based in Los Angeles, CA. In Sarah’s latest novel, Ripe, a young woman is trapped in a dream-job-turned-corporate-nightmare at a cutthroat Silicon Valley tech startup. Her bosses are capricious and cruel, the city she lives in is crumbling under late capitalism, and everywhere she goes she is followed by her own personal black hole. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about the relationship between her surrealist fiction and poetry, why visual art is important to her, and what it means for a character to have agency. Then for the second segment we discussed...

Episode 147: KTCO "Book" Club - Baldur's Gate 3 (with Maggie Tokuda-Hall)

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For this KTCO “Book” Club conversation, writer Maggie Tokuda-Hall returns to the show to talk about the game Baldur’s Gate 3. In our conversation, Maggie and I talked about what it’s like to experience a story with so many branching paths, how player choices reflect the player’s personality, as well as some standout storytelling moments from the game. (Recorded February 9, 2024.) Subscribe: | | | | | Support: | | Connect: | | | | Show Notes: Episode Credits Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa Music: ...

More Episodes

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a writer based in the Bronx, NY. In his debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana presents us with a dystopian future America where convicted prisoners fight each other to the death in a televised bloodsport. The book is both a blistering critique of the US carceral system and an insistence on the inalienable humanity of every person. In our conversation, Nana and I talked about what satire and dystopia open up for him as a writer, why it’s important to him to implicate both the reader and himself in his work, and how he thinks about prison abolition. Then in the second segment, we talked about the seductive nature of success as an artist in a capitalist society.

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Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa
Music: Podington Bear
Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

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