The Drunken Odyssey with John King: A Podcast About the Writing Life

The poet and memoirist Carolyn Forché discusses elegies, the role of the unconscious in composition, and being willing to avoid plans.

This week, I talk to historian Grace Elizabeth Hale about how Athens, Georgia helped launch an indie music revolution with the B52s, REM, Pylon, and other bands, and the art and college scene that spawned them.

This week, I share a Miami Book Fair panel of poets with debut books: Tommye Blount, Ricardo Alberto Maldonado, & Joy Priest!

In this week's episode, I talk with Julian Chambliss, Leslie Salas, Todd James Pierce, and Jeff Shuster about the legacy of Tron Legacy  (2010) and  Tron  (1982) and Tron Uprising  (2010) and many other things.

I n this week's episode, I talk with  Vanessa Blakeslee  about the excellent new anthology,  A Very German Christmas , from New Vessel Press. TEXT DISCUSSED

On #448, Dr. Peniel E. Joseph and I discuss the careers of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcom X, and how examining them together reveals the complexities of both of their evolving understandings of American history and politics.

Candacy Taylor and I discuss her new book,  Overground Railroad: The Green Book and the Roots of Black Travel in America . We talk about how research can transform a project, and how our understanding of our family's histories give us windows into understanding our nation's history, including our own precarious, sometimes alarming moment in it. We also discuss how instrumental color-coded index ca...

The fiction writer and veteran Phil Klay and I discuss finding the right form for a novel, war literature, the uplift of humor, and winning the National Book Award.

On this week's show, poet and scholar Audi Barnes and I discuss the essays and poetry of Audre Lorde.

On this week's show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss Jordan Peele's Us, and a lot of other things, too.

On this week's show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss Richard Stanley's recent film of H.P. Lovecraft's The Color Out of Space .

Photo by Leslie Salas.[/caption] On this week's show, Jeff Shuster and I discuss the genius of Richard Brake, the superior sound design of Rob Zombie's films, the paradoxes of carnie victimhood, the nightmare underbelly of The Great Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution, mere survival as an inadequate story-goal, likable characters, all while talking about Rob Zombie's overlooked brutal 2016 mas...

On this week's show, I talk with Jeff Shuster about Cosmos Panatos's 2018 classic horror film, Mandy, as part 1 of our series of discussions on horror films of the last decade.

Photo by Jon Rendell. On this week's show, I talk to Dmetri Kakmi about existentialism in horror, the performance of identity, the structure of memoir, and many other things.

On this week's show, I talk to novelist Chuck Palahniuk about The Invention of Sound , Consider This: Moments in My Writing Life after Which Everything Was Different , Adjustment Day , the 18-month rule, how to stay productive, how to keep invested in the work, the genius of Ira Levin, the value of mentors, and how to remix  Invisible Monsters.

  On this episode, I talk to writer Michael Wheaton about Alfonso Cuaron's 2006 film, Children of Men, while I wait in vain for my ears to stop ringing.

On this episode, I talk to poet Steve Davenport about poetry, collaboration, the body, and many other things. TEXT DISCUSSED NOTES Check out my literary adventure novel,  Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame .

On this episode, personal essayist Alex Miller and I talk about the intimate power of the personal essay, pitches, politics, and universities in NYC. Essays by Alex Miller Read " When I Can't Progress in my Love Life, I Level Up in Video Games " over at The Washington Post. Read " Facing my Fear: I Was Always Scared of the Dark. Then PTSD Made it Even Worse " over at The Guardian. Read " Kanye Mad...

Photo by Carlie Hoffman. On this episode, poet Ariel Francisco and I talk about Florida's wildness, Miami, Hollywood (Florida), multilingualism, Anna Nicole Smith, a sinking state, Jack Kerouac, FIU's MFA program, and many other important matters.

Episode 434 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on  Apple podcasts , stitcher , spotify, or click  here  to stream (right click to download, if that's your thing). On this episode, Nick Flynn and I talk about memoirs, boundaries, and getting the writing done.  

Darin Strauss and I discuss the utility of outlines, the utility of abandoning outlines, love, pain, stream-of-consciousness, love, Lucille Ball, Fred Trump, Coney Island, the semiotic intimacy of television, and love.

This week, I talk to podcaster Kyle Eagle about music and everything.

In this week's show, Vanessa Blakeslee and I discuss two online pieces on the subject of sex writing, and the conversation roves from there.

  In this week's show, I talk to writer, musician, and producer Jared Silvia about the connections between music and writing, the history of synth-pop, and the role of randomness and patterns to experience.

Photo by Emily VanDerWerf. In this week's show, I talk to novelist and video essayist Lindsay Ellis about science fiction; the structure of novels; exploring character interiority; alien invasion narratives; Chomskyian linguistics; the joys of making academic arguments about pop culture outside the academy;  Transformers ; and author platforms. Music by Modal Plane, used with permission.