Virtual Memories Show

Virtual Memories Show 694: Nate Powell “I’ve been drawn my whole life to a certain type of mystery: mystery that is not to be solved, but about the state of mystery.” With DIANA (Abrams ComicArts), Nate Powell has completed his “accidental triptych” of Ozark horror & the punk scene. During SPX weekend, he returned to the show to talk about the creative leap he too...

Virtual Memories Show 693: Karl Christian Krumpholz “Whenever an iconic place closes, everyone laments, ‘The neighborhood’s never going to be the same again,’ but whatever replaces it becomes iconic five or ten years later.” With his amazing IN THE CITY comics (self-published), cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz manages to capture the ephemerality and dynamism of urb...

Virtual Memories Show 692: Alison Fensterstock and Michael Tisserand “New Orleans has come to be defined by this hyper-awareness of its own identity. It’s all music, food, and culture, and it’s Bunny’s generation that started that deep examination of the identity of New Orleans.” Let’s celebrate a New Orleans legend with Alison Fensterstock and Michael Tisserand...

Virtual Memories Show 691: Emil Wilson “With comics, I think I was looking for an art form that I could devote the most amount of creative skills to, and graphic novels let me do art, let me write, let me do graphic design: different types of skills.” With his fantastic debut graphic novel, THE NIGHTINGALES (Avid Reader Press), Emil Wilson tells a heartbreaking and beautiful coming-of-...

Virtual Memories Show 690: Jonathan Ames “My goal is creating that sensation for the reader of having to turn the page. It’s like a kind of music.” Jonathan Ames returns to celebrate his fantastic new crime novel, A PAST WITHOUT PICTURES (Mysterious Press). We talk about his obsession with pulp fiction, how he found the character of Maria Cole and her tortured relationship with h...

Virtual Memories Show 689: Dash Shaw “Something not being placeable sticks with me a lot longer, and I think about it a lot more.” With his new book, LIKE SWIMMERS (New York Review Comics), Dash Shaw brings us a supernatural murder mystery set in COVID-era Richmond, VA. We talk about how he uses that story to explore memory, identity, art, marriage, and the social breakdown in America,...

Virtual Memories Show 688: Phillip Lopate “The whole history of American prose passed through Irving, then went somewhere else.” Five-Timer Club Alert! Essayist Phillip Lopate rejoins the show as we celebrate his wonderful new book, A WASHINGTON IRVING SKETCH BOOK (Princeton)! We talk about the origins of the biography, incl. how he wound up with a 12-volume set of Washington Irving&#8...

Virtual Memories Show 687: Ida Kao “I can point to a dozen different problems that all meaningfully contributed to why Hampshire is closing now. How all those things accumulated is pretty tragic.” “There are ways to downsize a college, but with Hampshire it felt more like a hollowing-out.” Our latest installment of The Hampshire Tapes features a conversation with Ida Kao (F...

Virtual Memories Show 686: Halstead York “The core Hampshire experience was figuring out how to do things for myself and figuring out how to excite other people about what I wanted to do.” It’s time for the first installment of The Hampshire Tapes! Halstead York (F88) joins the show to talk about his experience at Hampshire College , how the spirit of the school and its grand exp...

Virtual Memories Show 685: Sarah Minor “The panorama is a metaphor for the type of looking or the type of dizziness that early audiences felt. . . . It was like people in the 19th century were experiencing virtual reality for the first time.” With her amazing new book, CAROUSEL: An Essay On Seeing (Yale University Press), Sarah Minor offers a multi-threaded exploration — lecture, memoi...

Virtual Memories Show 684: Ali Trotta “I think mythology and fairy tales provide a good baseline, because almost everyone has read a subset of those stories, and the symbolism is something most people can reach for and relate to.” With her debut poetry collection, OFFERINGS FOR ORDINARY GODS (Clash Books), Ali Trotta brings myth, magick, tarot, and ritual to bear on the eternal & p...

Virtual Memories Show 682: Katie Skelly “I was on twitter and saw someone say, ‘The Weeknd makes music for haunted strip clubs,’ and that idea is something my brain kept coming back to.” After a 12-year Virtual Memories gap, Katie Skelly is back to celebrate her fantastic new graphic novel, HEAVEN (Fantagraphics)! But that’s not all: she’s also got the Bad Girl...

Virtual Memories Show 681: Colin Asher “The creation of culture is what marks us as human beings, and the fact that everybody has that desire connects us to each other.” With his amazing new book, THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL: The Secret Prison History of American Music (WW Norton), author Colin Asher explores how the criminal justice system changed the course of twentieth century music. We ta...

Virtual Memories Show 680: Kate Maruyama and Me BLARDY BLARDY BLARDY During my recent LA weekend, I asked author, pal, and past guest  Kate Maruyama if she’d be interested in interviewing me , and for some crazy reason, she said yes! So this time around you get me doing my best not to ask the questions, and just letting it fly, as we talk about the history of the podcast, my dream list of pod-gues...

Virtual Memories Show 679: Heather Cass White “This was the most fun I ever had making a book. I got to sit on the attic floor, going though Harold’s papers and books, and there were a lot of surprises.” “A letter is a joy of Earth — It is denied the Gods —,” sez Emily Dickinson (#1672), and THE MAN WHO READ EVERYTHING: The Literary Letters of Harold Bloom (Yale University Press)...

Virtual Memories Show 678: Paul Gravett “We’re so used to organizing society by male/female and other binaries and age, and so many things that slot you into places, and comics perfectly avoid those things. They’re a maverick medium or art form that’s never been respected.” Happy Pride! Let’s get Queer As Comics! Writer, critic, curator, and publisher Paul Grave...

Virtual Memories Show 677: Luis Mendo “Mundo Mendo is like the world of Mendo. It’s my world, and you need a spaceship to arrive here.” Welcome to Mundo Mendo! I visited artist and writer Luis Mendo in Karuizawa, Japan for a wide-ranging conversation about art, creativity, community and more. We talk about how he left design and embraced drawing and illustration, why he created t...

Virtual Memories Show 676: Benoit Denizet-Lewis “We choose our identities based on what’s available, and those choices are not just about what is true for ourselves. We take on identities because we need a purpose.” Can people change? How continuous is identity? With YOU’VE CHANGED: The Promise and Price of Self-Transformation (William Morrow), Benoit Denizet-Lewis explores...

Virtual Memories Show 675: Clare Carlisle “I was interested in that relationship between philosophy and art, between philosophy and life-writing, philosophy and narrative form: it’s really at the heart of this project.” Philosopher and biographer Clare Carlisle converses & communes with me over her new book, TRANSCENDENCE FOR BEGINNERS: LIFE WRITING AND PHILOSOPHY (NYRB). We...

Virtual Memories Show 674: Josh Alan Friedman “All of my best friends were sent away to reform school. I kept the letters they sent me, and they’re in the book.” Pull up a chair, enjoy a kasha varnishke, and listen to me and Josh Alan Friedman talk about his kaleidoscopic novel, ALL ROADS LEAD TO GREAT NECK (Wyatt Doyle Books/New Texture)! We talk about the momentous years he spe...

Virtual Memories Show 673: Andrew Durbin “I think we live in an era that is so deprived of authenticity, where people can’t live the lives Peter and Paul did, and so many young people are desperate to do that: to live in a cheap neighborhood and make art.” With THE WONDERFUL WORLD THAT ALMOST WAS: A Life of Peter Hujar and Paul Thek (FSG), Andrew Durbin brings us a masterful biog...