Keep the Channel Open

Molly Spencer is a poet based in Michigan. The poems in her collections In the House and Hinge engage with chronic illness, divorce, domesticity, motherhood, and the ways that our lives don't always work out the way we expected them to. In our conversation, we talked about dissolution, the uses of poetry, ways of knowing, and speaking unlovely truths. Then for the second section, we talked about a...

Luther Hughes is a poet based in Seattle, WA. The poems in Luther's debut collection, A Shiver in the Leaves , are tender, erotic, vulnerable, erudite, at times dark, and at times ecstatic. In our conversation, we talked about power dynamics in sexual encounters, different forms of love, and writing as a way of understanding oneself. Then in the second section, we talked about why so many sex scen...

André Ramos-Woodard is a photographic artist originally from Texas and Tennessee. In their series BLACK SNAFU , André combines photographs celebrating Blackness with appropriated illustrations from racist cartoons as a way of confronting the history and present reality of American racism. In our conversation we discussed appropriation, questions of audience and community, and mental health. Then i...

Amanda Marchand is a Canadian, New York-based photographer. Amanda's Lumen Notebook series is a body of elegant and strikingly beautiful images that nevertheless layer deep meaning within their seemingly simple compositions. In our conversation, Amanda and I talked about her process in creating these photograms and how working within strict constraints allows her to explore the technique more full...

Fatemeh Baigmoradi is a photographic artist originally from Iran. In her series It's Hard to Kill , Fatemeh works with archival family photos from Iran, using fire to obscure or destroy portions of the image—connecting to the way that her own family and many others burned their photos after the Iranian Revolution to protect themselves or others in the photos. In our conversation we talked about th...

Sarah Hollowell is a writer based in Indiana. Sarah's debut novel, A Dark and Starless Forest , is a YA contemporary fantasy story centered on a family of foster sisters learning about their magic, until suddenly they start disappearing. In our conversation we talked about the difference in process between short stories and novels, how her novel portrays abuse dynamics, and the importance of fan f...

Ayesha Raees is a poet and hybrid artist based in New York, Miami, and Lahore. In her debut book of poetry, Coining a Wishing Tower , she explores death, grief, culture, religion, separation, and return in a hybrid form that is part poetry, part narrative, part fable, and entirely remarkable. In our conversation, we talked about her book, her writing process, and sustaining a relationship with her...

Anahid Nersessian is a professor and critic based in Los Angeles, CA. In her latest book, Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse , Anahid takes the reader through close readings of John Keats's six Great Odes, providing cultural context and explicating their themes of sexual violence, melancholy, and the seductiveness of beauty. More than that, though, the book is, itself, a love story. In our conversa...

For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, writer and podcaster Maggie Tokuda-Hall joins us to discuss Susanna Clark's 2020 novel Piranesi . A relatively slim volume, Piranesi is surprisingly difficult to summarize but, like its labyrinthine setting, with patience and attention the book will reveal its profound beauty and kindness. (Conversation recorded February 24, 2022.) Subscribe: Apple Podca...

There's a way in which the end of a serious relationship can shake your entire concept of yourself, and through your grief you have to find yourself again. Yanyi's latest book of poems, Dream of the Divided Field , braids poems about heartbreak and implied emotional violence with poems about transition and immigration. Each has a similar but distinct sense of a loss of self, a search for self, a y...

Rowan Hisayo Buchanan is a writer based in London, UK. Rowan's second novel, Starling Days , is a beautiful story about the complex love between the book's two protagonists, Mina and Oscar, and their respective challenges in the wake of Mina's suicide attempt. Starling Days explores family and love in many forms, and how people both connect and separate. In our conversation, Rowan and I discussed...

Farrah Karapetian is an artist based in California. Known for her large-scale photograms, Farrah's wide-ranging practice incorporates sculpture, performance, and different forms of mark-making to stretch the photographic medium as she is driven by her intense and rigorous curiosity. In our conversation, Farrah and I talked about the appeal of the photographic medium, the tension between constructi...

Tucson-based photographer Ken Rosenthal's work has always stuck in my mind for both its striking visual style and the way that he uses images to represent and explore his internal emotional and psychological state. Whether he's looking at landscapes or family members or familiar objects, his photographs resonate because they represent the personal. We talked about several bodies of work, including...

For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, poet and podcaster Gabrielle Bates joins me for a conversation about Brigit Pegeen Kelly's 1994 poetry collection Song . In our conversation, Gabrielle and I talked about how Kelly builds the worlds of her poems, how the poems layer metaphor, and how the poems manage to be simultaneously (and paradoxically) both surreal and grounded. (Conversation record...

Kary Wayson is a poet based in Seattle, WA. The poems Kary's latest collection, The Slip , are wonderfully slippery in both form and feeling, in a way that demands attention and rewards deep engagement. In our conversation we discussed what a poem can do, how we approach "meaning" in poetry, and how life changes affect our art. Then in the second segment, we talked about time and our human percept...

My friend Paula Riff passed away recently, after having been ill with cancer for two years. Paula was a wonderful, kind, generous, and enthusiastic person, and a brilliant artist whose work pushed the boundaries of the photographic medium. I'm grateful to have had the opportunity to talk with her about that work for the show. In our conversation, Paula and I talked about what photography is to her...

For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, writer Wm Henry Morris joins me for a conversation about Sofia Samatar's 2017 story collection Tender . The stories in this collection range from fairy tale and folklore to dystopian sci-fi to (almost) contemporary realism, but all have in common Samatar's impeccable prose, attention to detail, and exceptional readership. (Conversation recorded December...

Kazim Ali is a writer based in San Diego, CA. Kazim's latest poetry collection, The Voice of Sheila Chandra , uses sound to explode meaning and explore silence and voicelessness, bringing together history, philosophy, spirituality, and personal experience to create something truly profound. In our conversation, Kazim and I discussed the divine in art, what the sound of poetry can embody and enact,...

Rizzhel Mae Javier is a photographer and installation artist based in San Diego, CA. I first met Rizzhel when we were both participating in the portfolio reviews at the Medium Festival a few years ago, and her stop-motion, flipbook-style pieces immediately caught my attention. More recently, Rizzhel was named one of the 2017 emerging artists by the SD Art Prize for her "Unmentionables" project, cr...

José Olivarez is a poet living and working in Chicago, Illinois, and is also co-host of one of my all-time favorite podcasts, The Poetry Gods. In our wide-ranging conversation we talked about how The Poetry Gods came to be, toxic masculinity in the poetry world, and how discovering poetry allowed José to find his artistic voice. In the second segment, we talked about beginnings and endings. (This...

Esmé Weijun Wang's debut novel The Border of Paradise was one of my favorite books of 2016. A multigenerational epic centered on an interracial family, the Nowaks, this book touches on so many profound topics, from mental illness to intergenerational trauma to culture clash to the very question of what it means to be a family, all done in stunningly beautiful prose. Esmé and I had a great conversa...

Jordanna Kalman is a fine art photographer who lives and works in New York. Jordanna's work explores loneliness, femininity and individuality, and the images are highly personal. In her series Little Romances , she rephotographs prints of earlier images of hers which had been stolen and misused. By considering the prints as objects and adding new elements, she creates a new narrative, examining th...

For this installment of the KTCO Book Club, I'm joined by writer Alyssa Harad for a conversation about Tove Jansson's 1982 novel The True Deceiver . Despite the slimness of the volume, Jansson's novel yet contains a surprising degree of depth and complexity, not to mention psychological tension, in a story that challenges the reader to consider the nature of truth, honesty, and different forms of...

Maggie Smith is a poet and essayist based in Bexley, Ohio. Maggie's new book Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change was born out of a difficult life change; it both discusses and is an example of resilience and hope in the face of an unknown future. In our conversation, we talked about the book's origins in a series of social media notes-to-self, about becoming an essayist after having...

In the inaugural KTCO Book Club episode I'm joined by writer and podcaster David Naimon, host of the literary podcast Between the Covers . For our conversation, David selected Teju Cole and Fazal Sheikh's hybrid photo/prose book Human Archipelago . In their collaboration, Cole's writing and Sheikh's images support each other in a way that expands the form of the traditional photobook and provides...