Book Fight (Mike Ingram and Tom McAllister)

It's a new season on the calendar, and that means a new season of Book Fight. This fall, we're going to be exploring the canon of creative writing, trying to find the best stories to teach in creative writing classes. Each week we'll have a different theme, either a craft element or type of story, and we'll each nominate a story we think works particularly well in the classroom. We'll pit the stories against each other and by the end of the episode crown a winner.

This week we've got Denis Johnson going up against Matthew Vollmer, with two stories featuring unreliable narrators: "Emergency" and "Will and Testament."

If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.

This week is all about genre-bending. We talk about Jo Ann Beard's essay "Werner," which was included in the 2007 edition of Best American Nonfiction, edited by David Foster Wallace, and which makes use of fictional techniques to tell a story that is (more or less) true. We also talk about skorts, against which Mike has a long-standing grudge. 

We're talking YA sports books with Defector Media editor/co-owner Dan McQuade, who gave us two classics of the genre to read. Hoop Crazy was written in 1950 by Clair Bee, who was also a college basketball coach of some renown. The book features a Gallant type who has to defend his school's top-ranked team from the dangers of both racism and the three-point shot. Dan's second selection was Iron Duke, a 1938 novel by New Yorker writer John Tunis, who never considered himself a children's author, despite the fact that nearly all his 24 books were marketed to children.

You can find out more about Defector Media here: https://defector.com/

And find Dan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dhm

If you like the podcast, and want to help support it, plus get two bonus episodes every month, you can do that on our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

We talk about DeLillo's forthcoming novel--a meditation on death, love, language and the permanence/impermanence of objects. If that sounds kinda heavy ... well, it is a DeLillo novel. In the second half of the show, we talk about a recent essay from The Walrus called "I Don't Care About Your Life: Why Critics Need To Stop Getting Personal n Their Essays," by Jason Guriel.

As always, visit us online for more: bookfightpod.com. 

We're joined by comedian and writer Charlie Demers to discuss a novel that the famous crime writer Donald Westlake finished in the early '80s but which wasn't published until after his death. At the time, he apparently worried that the plot--about a famous comedian kidnapped by a Weather Underground-style group of revolutionaries--was too similar to the Martin Scoresese movie The King of Comedy.

We talk about the book's take on politics and comedy, which may have some echoes in our current cultural moment. And also Charlie's relationship to these characters, since he's a stand-up comedian and someone who's quite active in progressive politics. Plus: beatniks, Bob Hope, the fragmentation of popular culture, and our pitch for a show about a detective with ADHD.

To learn more about Charlie, and follow his work, visit his website: https://www.charliedemers.com/

If you like our podcast, and want to exchange a few bucks for two montly bonus episodes, check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight

Note: This is the 3rd episode in our Noir season, but you don't need to listen to the episodes in order to enjoy them.

On this week's episode things get real: after reading Sarah Hepola's recent memoir we're prompted to discuss our own drinking habits, and whether we should be concerned about them.

We also talk about the book itself, which recounts Hepola's own arc of addiction and eventual recovery, focusing on her frequent blackouts, which often had her attempting to reconstruct an evening's potentially embarrassing events the next morning. Hepola also considers the gendered nature of addiction narratives, and how being a drinking woman might be different from being a drinking man.

For more, as always, you can visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

Join your Book Fight hosts as they seek out a possible Messiah in the badlands of North Dakota. Will they choose to follow him into the wilderness? Will they rebuke him? Only one way to find out...

Hey, listeners! Due to a death in Tom's family, there's no new episode this week. But we're reposting this one from the archives (first released in April 2013) in which Tom's old college roommate joined us for a discussion of Ernest Cline's Ready Player One. We hope you enjoy it! And we'll be back with a new joint next Monday.

As always, thanks for listening!

We've got another installment this week in our Summer of Spouses, in which we've been reading work by the less-famous partners of well-known authors. Interestingly, early on Margaret Millar's marriage to Ross Macdonald, whose real name was Kenneth Millar, she was the more famous of the two. Though eventually his reputation would take off, particularly after he created the character of Lew Archer. But she remained a well-respected crime writer in her own right, and is often credited with lending psychological depth to the types of characters who, in lesser writers' hands, tended to be rather flat and stereotypical.

In the first half of the show, we talk about Millar's prize-winning 1955 novel, Beast in View. Both of us found things to like in the book, but also some things we grew frustrated with. In the second half of the show, we talk about Millar's relationship with Macdonald, plus we dig into some more Yahoo Answers! questions about marriage, divorce, and flatulence.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps offset our costs and allows us to keep doing the podcast each week. In exchange for $5, you'll also get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we explore some of the weirder reaches of the literary universe: Amish mysteries, caveman romances, end-times thrillers and more!

This week we're discussing a book of "micro-memoirs" by the poet and essayist Beth Ann Fennelly. Plus another dive into the NaNoWriMo forums, and we resurrect a segment from the early days of the show: Judge a Book By Its Cover.

If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon. For $5, you'll get access to three bonus episodes a month, including Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations. How do you talk to a writer whose work you like after a reading? How do you promote your own writing without annoying people? Should you force your spouse or significant other to read your work? We've got the answers to these and many other pressing questions.

We've talked about Jennifer Weiner on the show before, usually when she's written (or tweeted) something that's caused a stir in the literary world, or when she and Jonathan Franzen have gotten into one of their famously catty spats. We also read one of her stories back in the Spring of Success. But this is the first time we've dived into one of her novels. She's argued that her work is unfairly pigeonholed, and so we were curious to check it out for ourselves.

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

This week we're continuing our Spring of Scandal season with a novella by the Chinese writer Zhu Wen, who stirred controversy by writing about sex, money and Chinese capitalism.

In the second half of the show, we discuss last fall's big YA-world scandal about a book that seemingly scammed its way onto the NY Times bestseller list. More importantly, we talk about how that scandal ended up outing the author of the internet's most infamous piece of fanfiction, "My Immortal."

Special guest Paul Lisicky (Unbuilt Projects, Lawnboy, Famous Builder) helps us get a handle on one of his favorite novels, and discusses his own relationship to structure and linearity. And his love of Lil' Wayne.

Tom hates metafiction. Mike tries to get him to love it, or at least appreciate it, using John Barth's 1996 collection On With the Story, linked stories that play a number of narrative games and call attention to how stories work, and how we expect them to work. We also talk about about the false dichotomy of sad stories vs happy stories, and why Tom's students want him to cheer the hell up.

We're taking a little break from our Fall of Finales season this week to chat with special guest Evan Madden, drummer with many hardcore and metal bands over the years, most recently Drones for Queens. It's always fun when we can get a non-writer onto the show to talk about their relationship to books and reading. Evan's book pick for the episode was Henry Miller's The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, about a road trip the author took across America in 1940, after living for years in France (though the book wasn't published until 1945, by New Directions, after it was rejected by Doubleday). Evan chose the book because he'd read, and liked, some of Miller's novels. But he didn't quite know what he was getting himself into with this one.

In the second half of the show, we talk to Evan about touring with rock bands, the ins and outs of life in a van, and why he hates Tom Clancy.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps offset our costs and allows us to keep doing the podcast each week. In exchange for $5, you'll also get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we explore some of the weirder reaches of the literary universe: Amish mysteries, caveman romances, end-times thrillers and more!

This week we continue our Spring Forward season by discussing a short story by Steven Millhauser called "The Dome. The piece envisions a future in which individual homeowners start building domes over their houses, followed by neighborhoods, then cities, then the entire United States of America. We talk about the story as a thought experiment, and how to write a successful story that has no characters (at least not in the traditional sense).

In the second half of the show we talk about domes: dome houses, and proposals to cover towns and cities with domes.

Our guest this week is Mike Meginnis (Drowning Practice, Fat Man and Little Boy). He joins us to discuss a playful genre-bending novel by Megan Milks, Margaret and the Mystery of the Missing Body. We also talk about Mike's relationship to genre, the similarities between genre and gender categories, and why he rarely cries.

You can find Milks' novel here: https://www.feministpress.org/books-a-m/margaret-and-the-mystery-of-the-missing-body

And find out more about Mike and his work here: https://www.mikemeginnis.com/

If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

Welcome to the first of our new summer series, in which we revisit work by authors who we've panned in the past. We read a Harlan Ellison essay last spring, and found it lacking, but perhaps we'll be swayed by one of Ellison's best-loved short stories.

Also discussed: How do you know when to give your own work a second chance, and when should you simply give up on a story/essay/book and move on to the next thing? 

Oh, and we also talk about cuckolding raccoons. If you're into that sort of thing.

For more: bookfightpod.com

What role does academic criticism play for a writer of fiction? Should you outline a novel before starting to write? And how and when should you ask for book blurbs? Bonus knowledge: Mike tells you how to invite the writerly muse into your soul, and Tom finally learns what the word "potluck" means. To ask a question, or for more episodes, visit bookfightpod.com

We're traveling back in time to 1877 to read a popular, serialized dime-store novel about lots of people shooting guns in the Old West. We talk about the popularity of dime-store novels, and how they correlated to rising literacy rates in the late 19th century. Plus: a story about coal miners being crushed under the boot of Gilded Age capitalism. And all our usual jibber jabber. 

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

This week we continue our Spring Forward season by discussing an essay by Matt Jones that first appeared in The New England Review and was then republished by The Lit Hub. The essay, titled "How Can We Warn Future Humans of the Poison We Buried Underground?", is a kind of thought experiment brought on by an actual project, in which a team of thinkers was tasked with coming up with a way to communicate to future societies that we'd buried nuclear waste under a specific spot in the desert. The essay delves into various ways that futurists think of possible futures, and the inherent optimist in even imagining a future.

We also talk about what the future of food looked like to people in the middle part of the twentieth century, and atomic gardens, and Betty Crocker's Recipe Card Library. 

This week's a Mike pick: George Singleton's new story collection, which is set in small-town South Carolina and populated by men who use their intelligence toward questionable ends. Plus a monkey, and lots of dogs. We also bring back our Judge A Book By Its Cover feature, take a couple potshots at Tucker Max, and read blurbs for a few more supporters of our fund drive. The episode is spnsored by Cobalt; you can get their new print issue for 1/2 price at the following link: cobaltreview.com/purchase/bookfight.

To MFA or not to MFA: that is the question. Also, what's our beef with flash fiction? And how should writers use Twitter and Facebook? Plus Tom burns a bridge, and Mike tries to glean some lessons from past failures.

This week we're discussing a novel that hit an awful lot of Best of 2013 lists, about a man who puts his young daughter into a Mini Cooper and runs away from his wife and--in a certain sense--himself. Also: Another installment of Raccoon News, plus Sticks & Stones. For more, check out our website, bookfightpod.com. 

This week we're reading a short story from Nick White's debut collection that was recommended by author Alissa Nutting. White's story prompts a discussion of the book business, specifically the rarity of short story collections published by big presses and how both the hype machine for young authors and the pushback against the hype machine for young authors can grow quickly tiresome.

Also this week: We begin what will surely be a multi-week exploration of book influencers (book-fluencers?) on Instagram.

Here's a link to the story, and Alissa Nutting's recommendation of it, via Electric Lit: https://electricliterature.com/alissa-nutting-recommends-a-story-about-the-aftermath-of-abuse-nick-white/

If you'd like to join our Patreon, to support the show and also get bonus episodes each month, you can do that here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

Thanks for listening!

This week we welcome special guest Dave Thomas (no, not that Dave Thomas), a writer of literary fiction--and founding editor of Lockjaw Magazine--who, with his wife, has recently taken a turn toward writing romance novels. Dave felt that the romance novels we'd read in the past were all pretty terrible, and wanted us to read a good one. So his book pick was by Julia Quinn, whose Regency-era novels are praised for their humor and for featuring strong, complex female characters. 

We talk with Dave about what separates a good romance novel from a bad one, and why he and his wife decided to write their own. You can find their books under the author name Josephine Banks.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps offset our costs and allows us to keep doing the podcast each week. In exchange for $5, you'll also get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we explore some of the weirder reaches of the literary universe: Amish mysteries, caveman romances, end-times thrillers and more!

This week's story is Stefan Zweig's "The Royal Game," which he sent off to his publisher along with the manuscript of his memoir and also his suicide note. We also talk about a variety of failed comebacks, including the rather remarkable story of America's late-19th-century King of Gum.

For more, check us out online at bookfightpod.com. 

Welcome back to our Summer School season, in which we're reading books, stories, and essays we feel like we should have read by now. John McPhee was in that category for Mike, especially as he's been teaching (and writing) more creative non-fiction. McPhee is a celebrated essayist who started out at Time Magazine and then moved on to a lengthy career at The New Yorker. In 1969 he wrote a long piece about a tennis match between Arthur Ashe and Clark Graebner that became a short book, Levels of the Game. Renowned as not just a piece of sports writing, but as a study in two contrasting characters at a pivotal moment in American history, McPhee's essay/book is considered a master of its form.

We talk about the essay, and about the very different turns the lives of its principle subjects took after it was published. We also talk about how McPhee put the piece together, which involved lugging a suitcase-sized projector down to Puerto Rico for a U.S. Davis Cup match.

Also this week: Mike tries again to eat a good donut.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, goofier corners of the literary world. Recently, that's involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore's Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Robocop.

Agatha Christie is one of the world's best-selling authors of all time, yet when we read her novel And Then There Were None earlier this year, we gave it mixed reviews. So we're giving Christie a second chance, digging into one of her most celebrated short stories, "Witness For the Prosecution" (which you can read for free via that link). 

Tom, in particular, seemed to dislike And Then There Were None, so will this story turn him? Or will Christie fall victim to our famously harsh two-strikes-you're-out rule?

In the second half of the show, we revisit some 90s bands that the internet thinks deserve a second chance, and we talk about another listener-submitted story of second chances. 

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

This week we welcome special guest Dan Brady, author of the new poetry collection Strange Children, from Publishing Genius Press. Dan is also the longstanding poetry editor of Barrelhouse Magazine, so it makes sense that he'd be the first guest to make us read a book of poems: Not Here, by Hieu Minh Nguyen.

On the episode, we basically treat Dan as our poetry concierge, forcing him to explain things to us about how poetry works, why so many people are intimidated by contemporary poetry, and why poems never rhyme anymore. In addition to writing poetry, Dan's been working as a poetry editor for years, so he's probably an ideal person to explain this stuff to us. He's also too nice to tell us to fuck off and stop badgering him.

If you like the show, please consider donating to our Patreon, which will entitle you to a special bonus episode each month. On our most recent bonus episode, we talked about an Amish mystery novel called A Churn for the Worse.

Our guest this week is Danielle Evans (The Office of Historical Corrections), who chose the 1929 Harlem Renaissance novel Plum Bun, in part because she's lately found herself interested in narratives about passing. We talk about how Jessie Redmon Fauset's novel compares to other passing novels, how Danielle's students respond to the book, and the complicated politics of writing about race and gender in the late '20s. 

We welcome special guest Christopher Gonzalez (I'm Not Hungry But I Could Eat) to discuss a novel that taught him a lot about flash fiction. Also discussed: the Netflix show Marriage or Mortgage, why flash fiction isn't just about word count, and how to title your novel to give critics an easy talking point.

If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, you can join our Patreon and get regular bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

This week, you might say that we're on a quest to find the best quest story to teach in a creative writing class. For years, both of us have taught Sherman Alexie's "What You Pawn I Will Redeem," but for a variety of reasons--including accusations of sexual harassment against the author--we're looking for something new. Will it be Charles Yu's story "Fable," or Chris Offutt's "Out of the Woods"?

If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.

This week is a Tom pick, by a writer who is Mexico's greatest novelist, if the blurb on the front cover is true. The novel--Herrera's only, so far, to be translated into English--follows a young woman named Makina as she crosses the border into the United States in search of her brother. We talk about the book's attempt to thread the needle between realism and fabulism, as well as one of its translator's more difficult decisions.

In the second half of the show, we've got a long-awaited update on Cousin Joey, as well as a new segment called Cargo Sweatpants Watch, in which Mike tries to triangulate what it means, culturally, that Tom owns a pair of cargo sweatpants. 

You can check out Herrera's book from Powell's, by clicking this link.

And as always, you can learn more about the show, and see links to some of the stuff we talked about this week, by visiting us at our website, bookfightpod.com.

This week we're talking about another literary scandal--the case of Danilo Kis's A Tomb for Boris Davidovich, for which he was accused of plagiarism, though it eventually became clear there were simply some people who were out to discredit him, however they could.

We talk about the politics around the book, and Kis, and provide a brief recap of a plagiarism scandal Wikipedia refers to as "tedious."

In the second half of the show, we talk about another literary plagiarism scandal--this one involving Martin Amis and a successful TV writer. We also eat a new Pop Tart flavor--or at least it's new to us.

Tom picked this novel, the author's first (though he'd already published two story collections, the first of which made him the youngest-ever winner of a Whiting Award). Reading the book made Mike question why he's making this podcast in the first place. So: good times!

In the second half of the show, Mike puts Tom on the metaphorical couch to help him figure out why he keeps feeling pulled away from the book project he's supposed to be working on. 

It's a real angsty week in Book Fight World, listeners. Enjoy!

This book won the Man Booker prize, though at least one of us might have thrown it across his living room. We talk about funny novels versus "comic novels," middle-aged male novelists who can't stop writing about their penises, and when it's okay to quit on a book. Also, Mike's got another edition of Fan Fiction Corner, featuring some alternate-universe TV fan fic, and ... well, spanking. 

You can buy Mike's recommended album here. You can find out more about the podcast here. 

We talk with the creators of Chill Subs, an online portal for all things literary publishing, about the state of lit mags, why finding places to submit your work is such a chore, and why they created a site that attempts to make it easier. Karina Kupp and Benjamin Davis joined us from Poland and Georgia, respectively, to chat about their own experiences in the lit world, and their ambitious plans for Chill Subs.

You can check out their site here: https://www.chillsubs.com/

You can read the Roxane Gay essay we discussed here: http://htmlgiant.com/random/a-rambling-poetry-fiction-literary-magazines-are-still-dying/ (that piece also links to the Ted Genoways essay Roxane's piece was responding to).

And if you like the podcast, and want to ensure it keeps existing in the world, please consider joining our Patreon, where a mere $5/month gets you access to regular bonus episodes, plus a treaure trove of past bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

Thanks for listening!

Just a little light summer reading: Joan Didion's 2005 memoir about grief and illness and loss. We talk about what distinguishes good nonfiction from bad, whether rich people are allowed to have problems, and gendered expectations for memoirs. For more, visit us at bookfightpod.com.

We had some technical difficulties this week involving accidentally deleted files, so we're reposting this "classic" Book Fight episode from our 2015 Winter of Wayback season, when we visited the year 1932 and read a couple stories by Robert E. Howard, creator of both Conan the Barbarian and Sailor Steve Costigan. We also talk cartoons, Australia's infamous "emu war" and the life of Olympian/professional golfer/all-around badass Babe Didrikson. 

Enjoy! And we'll be back on Monday with another episode in this season's Winter of Wayback, 1950s edition.

This week, prompted by a book that's been named to a bunch of Best of 2016 lists, we talk about how those lists are constructed, and whether they're a good representation of a given year's literature. We also talk about empathizing with murderous characters, and novels that portray contemporary political events. In the second half of the show, we try out some snacks that were sent to us by a listener in Japan, including some boozy Kit Kats, a drink that looks like watery milk, and some dried and salted fish.

Thanks to this week's sponsor, M.B. Manthe, whose poetry and publishing projects you can learn more about at her site.

We welcome another guest into the Book Fight Basement, our friend and fellow Temple faculty member Brad Windhauser, to talk about The Art of Fielding, a book which has garnered a ton of praise but which we're not sure is worthy of such critical handjobbery.

We're off this week for the holidays, but we're releasing this Patreon-only episode from September, in which we discussed THE DEAL, a sexy campus romance novel by Elle Kennedy.

If you like this episode, you can get one like it every single month for just five bucks. Check out all our bonus content at our Patreon page. 

This week's book, Canty's first novel, is one of Mike's favorites, while Tom is reading it for the first time. We talk about doomed teenage romance, small moments carefully observed, and what makes you want to return to a book. We also examine the free Wattpad app, and check out some Adam Levine/The Voice fan fic. 

We're always happy for an excuse to revisit the work of Denis Johnson, so when this week's guest said he wanted to discuss Johnson's novel Angels, we were all in. We talk to Nick about being a self-taught writer, the fine line between funny and sad, and why Johnson's portrayals of substance abuse and mental health struggles spoke to him. 

You can pick up a copy of Nick's first book, a collection of stories, here. 

If you like the podcast, consider joining our Patreon, where $5 a month gets you access to a huge treasure trove of exclusive bonus episodes.

This week we're discussing an A.M. Homes story about an adolescent boy who starts "dating" his sister's Barbie. Also, we revisit the time Robert Olen Butler went viral for the wrong reasons (losing his wife to Ted Turner), we remember HBO's Real Sex, and Mike gives some dating advice, this time on "ghosting."

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

This week we're unlocking one of our bonus episodes, usually available only to Patreon subscribers. This is the inauguaral episode in our Summer of Shorts season, in which we're discussing both short stories and short pants. In this episode we take on a Ling Ma short story and also a pair of "conspiracy shorts" that are supposed to protect you from electromagnetic fields.

If you like the episode, and want to hear the rest of the Summer of Shorts season, you can subscribe to our Patreon for just five bucks: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

You can also read the Ling Ma story we talked about here, via the New Yorker site (if you have free articles left this month, or are a subscriber): https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/07/11/peking-duck

This week we're discussing Annie Dillard's famous essay, "Total Eclipse," about the time she saw a total eclipse. Neither of us had read it before, and neither of us is quite sure whether we like it. We get Geoff Dyer's opinion, and Robert Atwan's, and a couple dissenting opinions from Goodreads, as we try to decide what to make of it. If you've never read the piece, you can do so here, via The Atlantic.

Also this week: Mike tries Indonesian food, and continues his quest for the perfect donut. And Tom has opinions about the best way to cook a s'more. 

This week we seek to settle an age-old debate: do you read the foreward first, or wait until you've read the book? Also: Nazis, animal cruelty, impotence, and classic Czech literature.

Thanks for listening! 

Our guest this week is the series editor for The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and author of the book The Possibility of Life: Science, Imagination, and Our Quest for Kinship in the Cosmos. She had us read an Ursula LeGuin novella about a "generation ship," a science fiction trope involving humans traversing the universe in search of a new planetary home. Did she pick this specifically to troll Mike, who is on the record as a sci fi skeptic? It's entirely possible!

We talk about what drew Jaime to science writing, and why she considers herself an essayist, rather than a journalist. Also: what would be on our wish lists for a new planet? And will this LeGuin novella finally be the thing to win Mike over to the side of sci fi?

You can learn more about our guest, and her work, at her website: https://www.jaimegreen.net/

And if you like the podcast, and would like more of it in your life, consider joining our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

We welcome special guest Lauren Grodstein (author of, most recently, the novel Our Short History) to discuss a 1959 novel that's become something of a cult classic, one which never earned its author widespread acclaim but which is consistently mentioned as a favorite by other writers.

We also talk about Lauren's new book, her love of plot, and how she manages to get so much writing done while being a working mother.

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

Thanks for listening!

This week we've set the time machine for 1961, and we're reading a story by the author and activist Tillie Olsen. We talk about Olsen's career arc and continued reputation, as well as lots of other 1961 news: racist conspiracies, gigolos, and the J.D. Salinger backlash. Plus: what were poets up to in 1961?

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

Welcome to your first installment in the Spring of Spite! This week we're reading a Richard Yates story, "Oh Joseph, I'm So Tired," which paints a pretty rough portrait of the author's mother and her failed attempts at artistic (and social) relevance. We also talk about the science of spite, and the phenomeon of "spite houses" and "spite fences." Finally, Tom gives Mike a spite-related quiz, though several of the questions are obviously flawed and not accurate measures of actual spitefulness, which is just objective fact rather than a reflection of which of us writes these weekly episode descriptions. Enjoy!

For more, including a link to several of the things we talked about in today's episode, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

This week's book is a brand new novel by Marcy Dermansky, about a woman who heads to San Francisco for the funeral of her former boss and, once there, begins to realize she might want to change her life.

We talk about the book's deadpan humor, its unique voice, and whether we're cool or not cool with ghost cars in literature. In the second half of the show, Mike is bummed out by Twitter, and also by dummies. 

Thanks for listening!

Book Fight road trip! We recorded this episode in a car (Tom's) while driving to the annual Conversations and Connections conference in Washington, D.C. The book this week is Tom's pick, and boy is it a bummer. Though a very well-written, culturally important bummer. We still found stuff to joke about, including bears, Tom's driving skills, tunnels, sharks, and Jay Leno's quest for love and approval. We also talked about the upsides and downsides of allegory, and whether Coetzee's narrator is a creep.

This week's closing music is from Phosphorescent's 2005 album "To Willie," which you can find in the iTunes store.

Last week's guest, Dave Thomas, stuck around to help us answer questions about self-publishing, giving away your work for free, the differences between undergrad and graduate workshops, and the joys and aggravations of academia. Talking points include: free e-books, shrimp on the barbie, Tom getting punched in the face, bloomin' onions, Kiwis, the Rocka-Fire Explosion, and belletriciousness. For more, visit bookfightpod.com.

This week we're talking about Kay Boyle's story "Defeat," an O'Henry winner from 1941. We also talk about a number of interesting things that happened in 1941, including: alien sightings, the time-traveling hipster, the first televised Mummers parade, the "state" of Jefferson's attempt to secede from Oregon, and the longest-ever coma. 

For more, including links to what we talked about on the show, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

Also: We're still running our annual fundraiser. You can donate--and get rewards--here, on our Indiegogo page. 

We read Rachel Kushner's National Book Award-nominated second novel and try to figure out what we think about it. Is it a great book? Is it an ok book with the scope and ambition and atmospherics of a great book? Is it ever, actually, possible to say, after reading a book for the first time?

We also talk about the gender-related flap this novel, and some of its criticism, briefly caused, and whether the Great American Novel is a gendered idea.

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

It's the third week in our Winter of Wayback season, and we're diving headfirst into 1953. Our reading this week is a story by Margaret St. Claire, a sci fi and fantasy writer who was quite active in the 1950s, and managed to carve out a space for herself in what was a very male-dominated world of genre fiction. 

Also this week, we talk about the critical reception for Arthur Miller's The Crucible, which debuted in 1953. Plus: the many incarnations of the band The Drifters, TV dinners, Scientology's South Jersey roots, and the high-profile divorce of Winthrop Rockefeller.

This week, Mike picks an essay that exemplifies some of what he doesn't love in contemporary writing about mental health. Too often, there's a tendency to fall back on abstractions, cliches, and platitudes, rather than to do the (admittedly tough!) work of putting the reader inside the writer's actual, lived experience.

In the second half of the show, we take one last dive into the NaNoWriMo forums to give our (semi-solicited?) advice to this year's crop of would-be novelists.

If you like the show, and would like more Book Fight in your life, please consider joining our Patreon! For $5/month, you'll get access to all our bonus episodes, past and future. Check it out here: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

We welcome our second guest into the Book Fight basement: Jason Lewis, who last year published his first novel, The Fourteenth Colony. More importantly for our purposes, Jason has now read A Farewell to Arms six times. He's got some thoughts about it! Plenty of which Tom and Mike take issue with, especially when it comes to the book's female lead. You can check out Jason's writing--and his music--at www.sadironpress.com.

We welcome special guest Jaime Fountaine to discuss the 1976 novel The Easter Parade, a beautifully sad story about two sisters whose lives are ... well, pretty sad. Talking points include: sweatpant jeans, New Yorker fiction, South Philly style, art school, and erectile dysfunction. Plus we debut a new segment: What's In The Bag? 

This week we're joined by Dave Housley to talk office novels! Dave's most recent book, The Other Ones, is about an office that wins the lottery--or, more specifically, it's about the people in that office who chose not to play. We also discuss Christian Tebordo's most recent novel, The Apology, which is also set in an office and involves some Clorox-related warfare.

If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which has forced us to read books by Tucker Max, Danielle Steel, Sean Penn, and--most recently--a kid who claimed that he went to heaven.

This week we're continuing our Spring of Scandal season with a discussion of Mark Greif's "Afternoon of the Sex Children," first published in N+1, and later appearing in Greif's collection Against Everything.

We're joined by Amy Butcher—author, most recently, of Mothertrucker—who tells us about the outsized influence Jo Ann Beard's work has had on her own writing, including her decision to write creative nonfiction in the first place. We also dig into some of the difficult genre questions posed by Beard's work. Is it fair to call a piece nonfiction when so much of it involves the invention of another person's interior life? What does the term "essay" really encompass? And do these genre distinctions really matter?

You can learn more about this episode's guest, and about her books, at her website: https://www.amyebutcher.com/

If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

This week we're continuing our discussion of literary "selfies" with this novel by Gaute Heivoll, which is about a string of arsons in 1970s Norway, though it's also about the writer who is haunted by those fires, even years later, enough to write a book about them. Though it's categorized as a novel, it seems clear the book's main character is closely aligned with Heivoll himself.

In the second half of the show, we talk about the phenomenon of the Mary Sue in fan fiction, and in the larger world of pop culture. Is it a useful term to describe stories in which writers create characters who are too-perfect versions of themselves? Or is it merely cover for men to offer misogynistic critiques of female characters?

Plus, you know, a bunch of dumb nonsense for which we are both sorry and not at all sorry.

Thanks for listening!

We talk writers' desks, literary agents, and grad-school recommendations. Plus Garfield, sexual roleplay, eggs (which are delicious!) and Tom's ill-fated turn on reality television. Get more at bookfightpod.com.

This week, J. Robert Lennon (Subdivision, Pieces for the Left Hand) joins us to discuss a story he loves to teach: Ted Chiang's "Hell is the Absence of God." We talk about what he hopes his students take from that piece, and why there are so few omniscient narrators in contemporary literary fiction. Plus: Christian summer camps, why you should never read your Goodreads reviews, and why John doesn't want to fight anyone.

This week, we're joined by Dan McQuade (Defector Media) to discuss humor columnist Dave Barry's debut novel, Big Trouble. Both Dan and Mike were big fans of Dave Barry's humor writing as teens, while Tom apparently skipped right over his newspaper column each week on his way to The Family Circus and Heathcliff. We talk about how difficult it can be to maintain a consistent tone in a "wacky" novel, as well as the ill-fated movie version of the book, which had the bad fortune of having a September 2001 release date as well as a climactic scene featuring a bomb on a plane. We also talk to Dan about Defector Media, the worker-owned company he's been writing for since the collapse, via venture capital shitheads, of Deadspin.

Check out Defector Media here, and subscribe to support independent journalism: https://defector.com/

And if you like our show, consider subscribing to our Patreon, which gets you two bonus episodes each month for a mere $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

Mike first read this book nearly a decade ago, and decided to revisit it after pulling it randomly from his shelf and reading the inscription inside, which he'd managed to forget. We talk about Bouillier's idea of a "report" as its own genre of literature, and books narrated by eccentric people trapped inside their own heads.

In the second half of the show we've got a quick bit of fanfiction, plus a potential fanfiction writing prompt, if any of our listeners are so inclined.

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

And if you're interested in coming to Writer Camp in September, here's the place for more information.

In celebration of the nine-year anniversary of our podcast, we're bringing back some of our favorite segments from the show's history! We also discuss some exciting changes coming down the pike.

If you like the show, and would like more of it in your life, check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

This week's discussion centers on a genre-bending book by Maggie Nelson, an unconventional memoir and a treatise on perception, pain, love and loss, and the color blue. Bluets came out in 2009 and has become a real touchstone for some writers of both creative nonfiction and poetry. 

We also talk about Tom's recent trip to Italy, his hatred of Romans, and Mike's growing hatred of online user reviews. 

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com.

We welcome writer and editor Michael Tager (Mason Jar Press; Pop Culture Poetry: The Definitive Collection ) to talk about Mindy Kaling's essay collection Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? Tager read Kaling's book during a period when he was reading a lot of memoirs and essay collections by comedians, including books by Tina Fey and Chelsea Handler. He talks about what made Kaling's stand out, and how his usual reading habits were interrupted by fatherhood. 

You can learn more about Tager's writing and editing projects, including his forthcoming book, at his website: http://www.michaelbtager.com/

If you like our podcast, and would like more of it in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, where $5 a month gets you two monthly bonus episodes, plus access to our entire back catalog: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

Thanks for listening!

This week's episode was recorded live at Temple University's Paley Library. We were joined by local writers Jason Rakulek and p.e. garcia for a discussion of literary community, balancing the work of writing with the need to make a living, and pieces of advice we would've given to our college-aged selves. The format for this episode is a bit different than usual, since we were trying to make the program as useful as possible for an audience of college creative-writing students. But we think there's plenty here that writers and editors of any age (and experience level) can enjoy, and learn from.

Sometimes the angriest books are also the funniest. Join us for a discussion of race and comedy, tokenism, Bill Cosby, and Donovan McNabb. Also: Tom is forced to revise his previous all-out ban on puns.

This week we're discussing a 1968 Elizabeth Hardwick essay about the Memphis funeral of Martin Luther King, Jr. The piece attempts to take the measure of both black and white Memphis after MLK's assassination, and notes tensions within the Civil Rights movement that in certain ways echo arguments within progressive movements today. We also dive into some 1968 debates about whether fiction was up to the task of representing an increasingly fractured, absurdist reality. Plus: women's magazines pull back on publishing short stories, drying up an important market for writers.

If you like the show, and would like to have more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which so far has included Ethan Frome, The Christmas Shoes, and Tucker Max's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

Elizabeth Hardwick on MLK: https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1968/05/09/the-apotheosis-of-martin-luther-king/

Tobi Haslett (in Harper's) on Elizabeth Hardwick: https://harpers.org/archive/2017/12/the-cost-of-living/3/

Our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

It's the last week of our Summer School season, and we're ending on a book (and author) Tom had never read. Topics include: Diner en Blanc, the titular lighthouse (and whether they'll ever reach it), mental health, donut holes, pumpkin spice, and why the kids these days love the TV show Friends.

If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest romance novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.

A question from a teenager about her novel project, and one about the difference between comedy and humor. Plus we dip into the ol' mailbag to talk about a brand-new service being offered to writers who hate to type. For more, visit us at bookfightpod.com 

This fall, we're exploring the canon of creative writing, trying to find the best stories to teach in creative writing classes. Each week we'll have a different theme, either a craft element or type of story, and we'll each nominate a story we think works particularly well in the classroom. We'll pit the stories against each other and by the end of the episode crown a winner.

This week we've got two second person stories: "How to Leave Hialeah," by Jennine Capo Crucet, going up against Lorrie Moore's "How to Be an Other Woman."

If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.

We're joined by Jen A. Miller--freelance writer and reporter, and author of Running: A Love Story--to talk about why she loves regency romance novels, and in particular those that explore queer relationships. Jen's book pick for us was The Queer Principles of Kit Webb, the first book in a new series from Cat Sebastian. We talk about the "rules" of romance novels, why they often don't get the respect of other kinds of books, and how contemporary romance authors are challenging the heteronormative traditions of the genre in interesting ways. Plus: the return of Jen's book-a-week blog, and why she loves celebrity memoirs in audiobook form.

You can keep up with Jen's weekly reading here, at Book a Week With Jen: https://www.bookaweekwithjen.com/.

You can also learn more about her work, and subscribe to her free newsletter on freelancing, at her website: https://jenamiller.com/

If you like the podcast, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

At the suggestion of a listener, in this special bonus episode we're discussing self-publishing, copyright, and how evolving digital technologies might influence both writers and publishers. Should writers and publishers embrace Creative Commons licenses and post their work online for free? Is copyright an outmoded idea? How can writers balance the desire to make a living with the desire to reach a wide reading audience? 

We've zoomed back in time to 1935, a year in which Philly politics got ugly, and monkeys ran wild on the streets of New York City. It was also the "golden age of detective fiction," so we read two stories by John Dickson Carr, considered a master of the form, particularly what's known as "locked room mysteries." 

For more, check us out online at bookfightpod.com. 

This week's book is a Mike pick: an essay collection about travel, displacement, love, loss and occasional psychedelic drugs. We talk about the necessary artifice of narration, and why readers so often fail to acknowledge it; how travel experience is often more about the traveler than the place itself; dark humor and bad habits. We also bring back our Sticks and Stones segment, make an important announcement, and get lost in a Groundhog Day-style feedback loop.

An intensely dark, often comic novel about the British landed gentry and child abuse. Talking points include: the decision to write a memoir or a novel, mean-spiritedness versus generosity, inspirational dog films, and which one of us Frazier and which is Roz. Also, another installment of MATR, and whether Tom's recommendations are to be trusted.

This week we're celebrating 1924 by reading one of the most popular short stories of all time, "The Most Dangerous Game," by Richard Connell. Even if you've never read the story, you'll probably recognize the basic plot, which has inspired everything from a Simpsons episode to the Van Damme movie Hard Target.

We talk about how this story stacks up compared with other '20s adventure stories, why it's still being taught to middle- and high-schoolers, and whether it's a commentary on social Darwinism. Plus: monkey news, and flapper bandits!

If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.

This week we're kicking off a new season of Book Fight: Summer School! The idea is that we'll dive into books, stories, and essays that we feel like we should have read by now. That could mean classics, but it could also mean contemporary work that's been sitting on our to-read pile for a long time, or that we've been avoiding for one reason or another.

For the first Summer School episode we've got a Mike pick: an essay from John D'Agata's book Halls of Fame. Mike's been meaning to get to some of D'Agata's work for years now, despite having mixed feelings about his relationship to the truth and "truthiness" (as explicated in the book The_Lifespan_of_a_Fact, which traced the back-and-forth between D'Agata and a fact-checker at the Believer who found a number of factual errors in his piece about suicides in Las Vegas).

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps us make a bit of money each month and keep the show going. For just $5 a month, you'll get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we visit some of the weirder, goofier corners of the literary world. Recently, that's involved reading a paranormal romance novel, the debut novel of Jersey Shore's Snookie, and the novelization of the movie Robocop.

We're joined by Steph Cha (author of Your House Will Pay) to talk about a famous California hardboiled novel none of us had ever read. What will it took us about tramps, insurance fraud, and the relative difficulty of staging a fake car-related murder? And what's the deal with that postman, with his infernal ringing? 

Steph, who has written several acclaimed crime novels herself, helps us to understand the genre we're exploring this season, and its evolution over time. 

To learn more about our guest, and her work, check out her website: http://stephcha.com/

If you like our podcast, and would like to help support it--plus get access to two bonus episodes every month--check out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/BookFight

Thanks for listening!

(Note: this is the 4th episode in our Noir season, but there's no reason you need to listen to them in order. Also, you don't need to read the book to enjoy the show.)

We've spent this fall season looking at some of the best stories to teach in creative writing workshops. It's our last week, and we're talking flash fiction. Definitions of flash vary, but generally speaking the term seems to apply to short stories of fewer than 1,000 words. We discuss our approaches toward teaching flash fiction generally, and then we dive into a few specific pieces: "What Happened to the Phillips?" by Tyrese Coleman; Jacob Guajardo's "Good News Is Coming"; "When It's Human and When It's Dog" by Amy Hempel; and two short pieces by Joy Williams.

If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.

This week we're joined by returning guest Asali Solomon (author of The Days of Afrekete) to discuss Kiese Laymon's award-winning memoir, Heavy. We talk about what people expect from memoir, and why readers are sometimes put off by complicated stories without easy resolutions.

Our guest this week is Laura McGrath, an assistant professor of English at Temple University, where she teaches literary criticism and contemporary literature--including a class about best sellers. It's in that context that she chose our book, Valley of the Dolls, the 1966 camp classic by Jacqueline Susann. We talk about the book as both a novel and a cultural phenomenon, and what McGrath's students make of it all these years later.

If you like the show, and would like more of it in your life, for $5 a month you can get two monthly bonus episodes, including our ongoing Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

This week, we're on the hunt for stories that do interesting things with time. More specifically, we talk about how "time" can be a useful angle into talking about story structure in a creative writing class. Our story picks are Stuart Dybek's "Paper Lanterns" and Raymond Carver's "Are These Actual Miles?" (or, "What Is It," depending on what version of the story you've got). Also: it's November, which means it's National Novel Writing Month, which means it's time for us to visit the NaNoWriMo forums!

If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.

Welcome to another week in our Summer of Spouses season, in which we read and discuss the work of writers who are married to (or otherwise partnered with) more famous authors. For this week's show we read a couple pieces by the writer Siri Hustvedt, an accomplished essayist and also the wife of writer Paul Auster. We discuss her mix of research with personal essay, which sometimes toes the line of academic writing.

In the second half of the show, we taste test some frozen abomination that is somehow allowed to trade on the Icee name.

If you like the show, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, which helps offset our costs and allows us to keep doing the podcast each week. In exchange for $5, you'll also get access to a monthly bonus episode, Book Fight After Dark, in which we explore some of the weirder reaches of the literary universe: Amish mysteries, caveman romances, end-times thrillers and more!

It's the most wonderful time of the year! A time for gathering with family, drinking lots of egg nog, and reading some absurdly terrible Christmas-themed books. First up this year is Christmas Letters, a delightful little romp from Debbie Macomber about a woman who finds love in the last place she thought to look (her own apartment building). Then there's The Christmas Thief, co-written by the mother-daughter team of Mary Higgins Clark and Carol Higgins Clark, about a Bernie Madoff type who hides diamonds in a tree and the merry band of self-satisfied lottery winners who manage to bring him to justice.

For more, visit us online at bookfightpod.com. 

This week we're talking Wikipedia vandalism, essays that show their editing work, and creative nonfiction that borrows moves from academic writing. Plus, another deep dive into the NaNoWriMo forums to help out this year's crop of aspiring novelists.

This week's reading is a David LeGault essay, "Revision and Collapse," which was first published in Fourth Genre. Though as always, you don't have to do the reading prior to listening to the episode.

If you like the show, and would enjoy having a little more Book Fight in your life, please consider subscribing to our Patreon, where $5/month gets you access to all our bonus episodes: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

We're joined by Joshua Isard (author of Conquistador of the Useless, and director of Arcadia University's low-residency MFA program), who answers questions about reading your own reviews, and what to do with an MFA in creative writing. Josh shares some details about Arcadia's program, we talk a little smack about Jennifer Weiner, and we speculate about Babe Ruth's junk. 

We're kicking off our Winter of Wayback season, in which we travel to the past and dig up some forgotten (or under-appreciated) books and stories, and use them to learn some things about the time period. This year we'll be traveling through the 1920s, a decade neither of us knows all that much about, outside of the stereotypical images of flappers and speakeasies and Lost Generation writers smoking jazz cigarettes at Parisian cafes. For 1920 we've unearthed some old issues of Black Mask, a pulp magazine begun by H.L. Mencken as a way to fund his more literary magazine, The Smart Set.

We break down a few stories from the magazine's early issues and talk about story-writing in an age before television. We also talk about our (limited) knowledge of the 20s, and what we hope to learn this season.

If you like the show and would like more Book Fight in your life, consider subscribing to our Patreon. For $5/month, you'll get access to regular bonus episodes, including monthly episodes of Book Fight After Dark, where we read some of the world's weirdest--and steamiest!--novels. We've also recently begun a new series of Patreon-only mini-episodes called Reading the Room, in which we offer advice on how to navigate awkward, writing-related social situations.

This week we're continuing our Spring of Scandal by discussing author Michel Houllebecq, who's been a polarizing figure in the literary world for years now, particularly in France, where his books have been much-discussed best sellers but he's been largely rebuked or ignored by the literary establishment. He didn't necessarily help his cause when, in a 2001 interview, he went on a rant about Islam and its practitioners.

The book we read was The Elementary Particles, a novel about two brothers whose adult lives are--in different ways--rather isolated and unhappy. The book offers a pretty pointed critique of liberal French politics, though one wonders how seriously we're meant to take the book's various political rants.

We're joined by Kristin Keane, author of An Encyclopedia of Bending Time, to discuss A Ghost in the Throat, a genre-crossing memoir by Irish writer Doireann Ní Ghríofa. We talk about strategies for incorporating research into creative nonfiction, what counts as "text" beyond traditional words on a page, and some of the challenges Kristin faced when she decided to structure her own memoir as an encyclopedia. Plus: Quantum Leap, foot massagers, and none of us understands what the metaverse is.

You can read an excerpt of Kristin's book here, via the Washington Post.

If you like the show, and would like more of it, we're releasing two bonus episodes a month to our Patreon subscribers, for only $5: https://www.patreon.com/BookFight

We welcome guest Leslie Jamson (The Empathy Exams) to discuss Michael W. Clune's memoir White Out: The Secret Life of Heroin. Clune was a PhD student in literature at John Hopkins in Baltimore and also a daily heroin user. We also talk about addiction memoirs more generally, Leslie's own forays into writing creative nonfiction, pie shakes, Iowa City, and Haley Joel Osment. 

You can preorder Issue 13 of Barrelhouse (the comedy issue) at the Barrelhouse website. You can learn more about us, and the show, at bookfightpod.com.