The Virtual Memories Show

From St. Louis, my brother Boaz Roth checks in to talk about how his role as a teacher has changed in the COVID-19 era. We get into how this whole experience measures up with the time his house burned down and his family had to live in a rental for 9 months while they rebuilt, the books he's reading, and the optimal size for an online seminar. • Listen to our full-length podcast • More info at our...

From Arlington, MA, essayist and AGNI co-editor Sven Birkerts checks in to let us know what books and poems provide him some degree of solace during the pandemic. We talk about what normal might look like in future and the way the recent past seems unreal, his daily challenge of taking an interesting photo for Instagram , the theme of ongoingness in literature, caring for his 92-year-old mom, and...

It's legendary science fiction author Samuel R. Delany 's birthday! Chip checks in from Philadelphia, where he's found himself working on a new piece of fiction. We talk about comparisons with his AIDS-era experiences, his partner Dennis's willingness to share him with Rachel Maddow, his recent binge of Tiger King on Netflix and his disappointment in Da Vinci's Demons , his new website, samueldela...

Horror fiction editor Ellen Datlow checks in from the West Village of NYC. She talks about the low-grade anxiety of day-to-day life, getting by when USPS services drops to 1-2x/week, turning down an assignment to recommend pandemic-novels for quarantined readers, how her Fantastic Fiction reading series is going virtual, and more. • Follow Ellen on Twitter and sign up for the livestream of her nex...

On March 30, Eva Hagberg got the news that she tested positive for COVID-19. We talked that evening about her condition, her previous life-threatening health issues (chronicled in her memoir How To Be Loved ) and how they shape her response to this, the impact of self-isolation on sobriety (she's doing fine with that, but worries about others), and more. • Follow Eva on Twitter and Instagram • Lis...

On Sunday, March 29, cartoonist Tom Tomorrow (a.k.a. Dan Perkins) checked in to let us know how he's getting by in New York City during the pandemic. We talk about schlocky movies, the current challenge of being political satirist but the benefit of being a science fiction fan, the further collapse of alt-weeklies (and the need to support This Modern World via subscription !), and the last thing h...

A few days ago, cartoonist Peter Kuper returned from Oaxaca, Mexico to the Upper West Side of New York City. He joins the show to talk about why he & his wife made the decision to come back at a time that New York's COVID-19 cases are blowing through the roof. We talk about the communal nature of life in Mexico, whether the situation here matches up with his decades of dystopian visions in World W...

Jim Ottaviani , award-winning & best-selling author of graphic novels about scientists (think Hawking , Feynman , Fossey , Turing ), checks in from Ann Arbor, MI. We talk about how he's balancing his day job and comics writing with the compulsion to read the news and graph out infection rates. We also get into whether his science background has helped his perspective on the pandemic, how the unive...

In our first Covid-Check-In podcast, artist Kate Lacour ( Vivisectionary , Fantagraphics) calls in from New Orleans while her kids are asleep. We talk about how she's coping — taking care of her kids & her garden, reading Cixin Liu, making diary comics, helping neighbors — and how she's planning to celebrate her birthday tonight. • More info at our site • Support The Virtual Memories Show via Patr...

It's the end of the world as we know it, and we feel fine! A few weeks before the COVID-19 lockdowns began, pop culture writer and REM maniac Whitney Matheson joined the show to talk about how she managed to blaze her own journalistic trail by writing about the music, movies, TV and books that she loved. We get into how pop culture writing and blogging have changed since she launched Pop Candy at...

The phenomenal new book, Feast of Ashes: The Life and Art of David Ohannessian (SUP/Redwood Press), traces the history of an Armenian family from the mountainous woods of Anatolia to suburban NJ. Author Sato Moughalian joins the show to talk about her inspiration to write the life of her grandfather, ceramic tile artist David Ohannessian , the chronicle her family's exodus through the Armenian Gen...

Your host Gil Roth talks about how COVID-19 is impacting his work, his life, and this podcast, in a special bonus episode of The Virtual Memories Show .

The great cartoonist Ben Katchor rejoins the show to talk about his brand-new book, The Dairy Restaurant (Schocken), a 500-page illustrated history of, um, dairy restaurants! We get into what drew him to the milekhdike personality, the remnants of Eastern European Jewish culture that call to him, why this book had to be prose-with-pictures rather than comics, the decades of research and interviews...

Writer, actress and adult performer & producer Stoya joins the show to talk about her upcoming NYC theater appearance in Dean Haspiel 's new play, The War of Woo . We get into how she's grown as an actress, why porn is like sketch comedy, her joy in the surprises of live theater, publishing her first book , and the mental benefit of moving the decimal. We discuss her vision for her online erotic m...

In a murder hotel in Jersey City, author Cassandra Khaw joins the show to talk about her bad luck with AirBNBs, the root of her fixation on body horror, and how she settled on a cannibal chef for one of her main characters so she could (imaginatively) explore the concept of turning 180 or so pounds of human being into a fine meal. We get into her Food of the Gods series and her other supernatural...

With his new novel, The Grand Dark (Harper Voyager), Richard Kadrey takes an artistic leap from his renowned Sandman Slim supernatural noir books. We sit down in a murder hotel to talk about mixing robots and genetic engineering with Weimar Germany, getting inspired by Mel Gordon's Voluptuous Panic , David Bowie's Low , and the Brothers Quay's Street of Crocodiles , the impact of the 2016 election...

With his new memoir, Soviet Stamps , artist & writer Dmitry Samarov explores his experience of emigrating from the USSR as a child, finding his way through late-'70s and '80s America, and becoming an artist. We talk about the book's winding path to self-publication, how his story does and doesn't fit in to the history of Soviet Jewry, how he overcame the embarrassment of including his adolescent a...

The great publisher, editor, anthologizer, retailer and collector of crime fiction, Otto Penzler , joins the show to talk about his wonderful new book, Mysterious Obsession: Memoirs of a Compulsive Collector (Mysterious Bookshop), and his decision to auction off the world's greatest collection of crime fiction (think ~60,000 first editions). We get into his instant regret about that decision, how...

In a time where immigration is under attack, Joan Marans Dim and Antonio Masi demonstrate the history and importance of immigration in America with Lady Liberty: An Illustrated of America's Most Storied Woman (Fordham University Press). We get into what drew the writer and watercolor painter to the Statue of Liberty, how they came to their previous collaboration on the bridges of New York City, th...

His wondrous new collection, Ecstasy and Terror: From the Greeks to Game of Thrones (NYRB), brings a dizzying array of Daniel Mendelsohn 's critical-essayistic-memoir pieces together. We sat down to talk about the work of the critic and the drama that makes for a great critical piece, as well as the temptation to make a name by going after easy targets, his need to criscross genres and categories...

Legendary designer Walter Bernard joins the show to talk about Mag Men: Fifty Years of Making Magazines (Columbia University Press), the new book he co-authored with Milton Glaser . We get into the art and necessity of collaboration, the relationship he and Milton developed over half a century of work, the pros and cons of doing redesigns for globally established institutions, and the decline of p...

With her new book That Was Awkward  (Viking), cartoonist and humorist Emily Flake explores the world of awkward hugs. We get into how that book landed in her lap, why she hates drawing other people's jokes, and how she learned (and pushes the boundaries of) the New Yorker cartoonist's voice. We talk about the massive influence of Shary Flenniken's Trots & Bonnie comics on her work, the question of...

It's time for our annual Guest List episode! More than two dozen of the year's Virtual Memories Show guests tell us about the favorite books they read in 2019 and the books they hope to get to in 2020! Guests include Christopher Brown, Nina Bunjevac, Jerome Charyn, Caleb Crain, Joan Marans Dim, Boris Fishman, Katelan Foisy, Mort Gerberg, Eva Hagberg, Peter Kuper, Kate Lacour, Liniers, Kate Maruyam...

"I had an amazing life, and my love for my family is unsurpassed, followed nearly as much as the love for my closest friends. Be kind to yourselves, and live in laughter as much as possible. I love you. Thanks for everything." This special episode of The Virtual Memories Show features the memorial service for Tom Spurgeon , held December 14, 2019, at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum ....

Political artist/illustrator Peter Kuper rejoins the show to talk about his new graphic adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (WW Norton). We get into the highwire act of addressing race without diluting the book or otherwise changing Conrad's tale (that is, how do you balance adaptation and revisionism?), how Peter accidentally subjected himself to some of Marlow's ill health while adap...