668: Margie Sarsfield
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
Release Date: 04/12/2025
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.
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Replay: Episode 130 with Jaquira Díaz
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
In this week’s replay episode, John talks to author and editor Jaquira Díaz in a show dating back to 2014. Many thanks to Brian Salmons.
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674: Peter Kuper!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
On today’s art-infused program, Drew Barth speaks with comic book legend Peter Kuper about his wonderful new book, Insectopolis, a project created during Peter’s residency at the NY Public Library, plus I briefly speak with my friend, the artist Jeff Wilfong, about his upcoming residency at the Timucua Arts Foundation here in Orlando.
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673: A Discussion of William S. Burroughs's Junky, with Matt Peters!
The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life
This episode is a recording of the inaugural meeting of the Kerouac Project of Orlando's Book Club. Matt Peters and I discuss William S. Burroughs's debut novel, Junky, and its place in the first quartet of his transformative works. The setting for this conversation is the place where Jack Kerouac lived when On the Road came out, where he lived when writing the first draft of The Dharma Bums.
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.