668: Margie Sarsfield
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
Release Date: 04/12/2025
Episode 684: A Pop Poetry Conversation about Megan Fox's Pretty Boys are Poisonous
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
This conversation with Samantha Nickerson, Brian Salmans, and Rachael Tillman will give you some idea of the mischief you are missing out on, and the pain John is putting himself through.
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683: Eugenio Negro!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
This week, John speaks with the fiction writer, , and musician Eugenio Negro about his new novel, Despair Priorities, the long term project, and figuring out what will be deeply satisfying as a writer and reader.
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682: A Discussion of Charlotte Brontë's Tales of Angria, with Sophia Ferrara
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
Sophia Ferrara joins John down the rabbit hole of Charlotte Brontë's early private storytelling.
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681: The Kerouac Project of Orlando Book Club Discussion of William S. Burrough’s Junky (with Matt Peters)!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
In this week's show, John teams up once again with his friend Matt Peters to discuss the second book of William S. Burroughs's original quartet of novels. They also discuss the recent film adapation of the same.
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680: Katharine Coldiron!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
On today’s show, I speak with the essayist Katharine Coldiron about how the way we watch movies are sometimes our autobiographies, sometimes our philosophies, and sometimes our humanity.
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679: Keith Mackenzie!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
On 679, John speaks with the novelist Keith MacKenzie about how to plan an unplannable thriller, and how body horror and comedy and existentialism are awfully close neighbors.
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678: Zach Zimmerman!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
On 678, John speaks with recent resident about memoir, memories, childhood, comedy, tragedy, the problems of authenticity, and other vital literary matters.
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677: A Discussion of The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt, with Rachael Tillman!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
On this episode, John and Rachael discuss the poetic output of Hannah Arendt's poetry, newly translated into English in a new book from Norton, translated by Samantha Rose Hill and Genese Grill, plus Fred Lambert delivers another masterful installment of the Booze News Roundup.
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676: Skye Jackson!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
On this episode, John speaks with Kerouac Project of Orlando resident Skye Jackson about how to create a poetry collection that can be read in one sitting, how to balance the concrete and imaginative abstraction, inviting the audience in, recording a poetry audiobook, ekphrastic poetry, and living in New Orleans.
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675: Tom McAllister!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
On this episode, John speaks with Tom McAllister about writing burnout, writing prompts, revision, and discovery, as well as Tom's wonderful new collection of flash memoirs, It All Felt Impossible.
info_outlineIn Margie Sarsfield’s debut novel, Beta Vulgaris, a hipster Brooklyn couple take on temporary work at a Minnesota beet farm at harvest time in order to earn extra money to help them maintain their Brooklyn lifestyle. Elise, the protagonist, who suffers from anxiety that she is no longer medicated for, notices that her fellow workers disappear, either because the work is too difficult or else other mysterious reasons. Elise’s experience becomes more anguishing when her boyfriend also disappears, and then the beets start materializing around her wherever she goes, and the beets gradually begin to speak to her.