Episode 534 – Noah Van Sciver
Episode 383 – Everett Glenn
Episode 306 – Eva Hagberg Fisher
Episode 181 – Chris Rose
Virtual Memories Show #181: Chris Rose
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“After Katrina, I looked around and saw we had reporters out covering the destruction, but ain’t nobody looking around and what’s left. So that’s what I started to do to. I drove my car around the city until I ran out of gas. I got on my bike and rode around until I got a flat tire. And then I started walking. And I wrote about what was here, rather than what was gone.”
Chris Rose wrote the definitive book of life in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, 1 Dead in Attic
“My tour is like standup comedy, but we keep moving the stage. Drop all the pretension, and just start telling the stories like you do on stage.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
If you can make it through my self-pitying ramble of an intro (just skip to like 6:45), and you’ll hear a great talk about being New Orleans famous and/or infamous, the catharsis of the 10-year anniversary of Katrina, the other walking tours he’d love to run, his literary and journalistic heroes, how he got blackballed by his college newspaper, the time he got a cease-and-desist letter from Richard Ford, and why he’s never leaving the city again. Now go listen to the show!
“I was an ordinary man living in an extraordinary time. . . . All I did was write every day about what it was like trying to live in an unlivable city.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Chris Rose used to be a columnist for the Times-Picayune in New Orleans, where he was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Commentary. He won a Pulitzer for his contributions to the Times-Picayune‘s Public Service. He was a finalist for the 2006 Michael Kelly Award. His book, 1 Dead in Attic
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded at Harry’s Corner bar on Chartres St. on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones
Episode 157 – Dan Cafaro
Virtual Memories Show #157:
Dan Cafaro
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“The reality of this marketplace is that true professional writers aren’t being recognized.”
Dan Cafaro, publisher of Atticus Books and the Atticus Review, joins the show to talk about indy publishing, building a writers’ community, taking on the diversity challenge, making the transition from sportswriter to bookseller to book-blogger to publisher, the importance of a supportive spouse, the trick of balancing print and digital (and publishing and a day job), making the investment in a book designer, and more! Give it a listen, and go check out the great catalog of Atticus Books!
“It can be easier to get a good review than to understand how it may translate into sales.”
BONUS: You get to hear me lament about my days as a small press publisher (1998-2004), while Dan & I try to figure out how to market books effectively in This Distracted Age. We also reminisce about a long-gone bookstore in Hackensack, NJ, and make somewhat oblique sports references. We recorded this show at Short Stories Community Book Hub, in Madison, NJ (photo below). It’s a wonderful space, and a neat bookstore, so go visit if you’re in the area!
“Building a writers community is my dream.”
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
Also, if you want to find out who Dan is reading nowadays (non-Atticus titles) and get a list of the books we talked about in this episode, join our Patreon and become a monthly contributor to The Virtual Memories Show! At the end of March, the new episode of our patron-only podcast, Fear of a Square Planet, will go up with a bonus segment about who Dan is reading and why.
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! You might like:
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Dan Cafaro is the founder and publisher of award-winning independent press Atticus Books and the Atticus Review, a weekly digital literary magazine. Dan founded Atticus in 2010 after working as a sportswriter, bookseller, editor, and publications manager. He is currently at work on his first novel, The Next Activist, and swears that it has all the makings of a really great reality TV show.
Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The conversation was recorded at the wonderful Short Stories Community Book Hub, in Madison, NJ, on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Podcast – Time’s Bomb
Virtual Memories Show: Nina Bunjevac –
Time’s Bomb
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“Fatherland is really about who my father was, getting to understand him, and also an attempt to explain how politics can tear a family apart, just like they tore apart the people of Yugoslavia in the 1990s.”
Nina Bunjevac‘s new book, Fatherland
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“When I got to Canada when I was 16, I saw an issue of Raw, and that pretty much did it.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Nina Bunjevac started her art training in Yugoslavia, at the Djordje Krstic School for Applied Arts; in 1990 she moved to Toronto, Canada, where she continued her studies in art at the Art Centre of Central Technical School; in 1997 she graduated from OCAD in the Drawing and Painting department. Formerly a painter, a sculptor and an art teacher, Nina found her calling in sequential arts, a form that seemed to naturally evolve out of the narrative component in her sculpture installation work. Pen and ink became her medium of choice.
Nina’s comics have appeared in a number of local and international publications: Komikaze (Croatia), Black (Italy), GIUDA (Italy), Stripburger (Slovenia), Zone 5300 (Netherlands), Stripolis (Serbia), ArtReview (UK), Asiatroma/Le Dernier Cri (France), Broken Pencil, Exile, Taddle Creek (Canada) and Mineshaft (USA). Her debut collection of comics, Heartless
Fatherland: A Family History
Photo of Nina Bunjevac by David Hawe.
Credits: This episode’s music is Bomba by King Africa (I make no apologies). The conversation was recorded at the Marriott Bloor in Toronto on a Zoom H2n
Podchast – Parental Guidance
Virtual Memories Show: Roz Chast – Parental Guidance
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“Starting out at The New Yorker at 23, I thought, ‘If I draw really small, this won’t bother people too much.’ My editor told me it wasn’t just readers, but some of the older cartoonists really hated my stuff. One of them asked him if he owed my family money.”
Roz Chast is one of the best-known cartoonists around, famed for her New Yorker gag panels and comic strips about anxiety, neurosis, phobia, parental insanity, and a ton of other symptoms of our worried age. This year, she published her first long-form book, a 240-page graphic memoir about her parents’ final years called Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“My mother didn’t read books about child-rearing. She was an educator, so it was sort of surprising. Maybe she felt she knew it all. And she did . . . as an assistant principal. But being an assistant principal is not the same as being a parent. It’s really, REALLY different. They almost have nothing in common.”
We also talk about her history in cartooning, why drawing chops aren’t the be-all and end-all, what makes her laugh, the best advice she ever got (from Sam Gross), and her love of Disco, the talking parakeet. Bonus: We bond over our neuroses and I talk a lot! Maybe that’s more like a minus than a bonus. Whatever.
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Roz Chast
has loved to draw cartoons since she was a child growing up in Brooklyn. She attended Rhode Island School of Design, majoring in Painting because it seemed more artistic. However, soon after graduating, she reverted to type and began drawing cartoons once again.
She’s best known for her work in The New Yorker, but her cartoons have also been published in many other magazines, including Scientific American, the Harvard Business Review, Redbook, and Mother Jones. Her most recent books are Can’t We Talk about Something More Pleasant?: A Memoir
Credits: This episode’s music is Mother’s Love by Tsegue-Maryam Guebrou. The conversation was recorded at Ms. Chast’s home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones
Podcast – The Peace Poet
Virtual Memories Show: Charles Bivona – The Peace Poet
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“I think people are experiencing a lot of things in America that they just don’t have the words for. If I’m going to run around and wave this POET flag, then my job is to jump into the difficult situations and try to put them into words.”
Charles Bivona‘s business card reads, “Poet, Writer, Professor,” but he’s a lot more than that. Over the course of an hour, we talked about what it means to be known as NJPoet, his theory on the transmissibility of PTSD (based on the first-hand evidence of his father’s Vietnam War trauma being visited on his family), the value of building a massive Twitter network, the lessons of growing up poor, how Walt Whitman saved him on one of the worst days of his life, the virtues of a gift economy, and why getting bumped out of academia for blogging may have been the best thing for him.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More
“I think the core of my project is asking you, ‘What do you think your children think about what you’re doing right now?'”
We also discuss the role of poetry in America today and the poets who saved him in his youth, why he doesn’t publish poetry online, whether Twitter is more like The Matrix or The Watchmen, how his responses to Occupy Wall Street and Hurricane Sandy elevated his online presence, and why it’s important not to put yourself in an ideological cocoon.
“If you relax your ego, and say, ‘I’m here as a student and a teacher,’ you’ll get a lot out of social media.”
Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes! Related conversations:
- Ron Slate
- Fred Kaplan
- Rachel Hadas
- Zach Martin
- Lynne Sharon Schwartz
- plus, read my tribute to Chuck’s best friend, Sang Lee!
Follow The Virtual Memories Show on iTunes, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!
About our Guest
Charles Bivona (pictured above with his wife, Luz Costa), has the following on his About page:
Charles Bivona would tell you that he’s just trying to help his creative friends figure out ways to reach their goals, to help them in any way he can—writing letters, Twitter endorsements, all-out social media campaigns, word-of-mouth networking. Whatever helps. Otherwise, he’s reading, tweeting, listening to alternative news media, producing blog posts, and writing the first of hopefully several Kindle books and paperback poetry collections.
If you push him to be more philosophical, to talk more specifically about the social media strategy that built his audience, he frames his work as a Zen Buddhist approach to engagement based on mindfulness and honesty. With this in mind, he’s gathered an artistic social network that simmers with creativity, compassion, and humor. The writing itself, the poetic prose on his website, is also clearly informed by a Buddhist literary theory, rooted in practical teaching, mindfulness, and a vivid social reporting.
“It’s more of a life philosophy and a daily practice than a marketing plan,” Charles often says. “I’m using the web to make an attempt at Buddhist Right Livelihood, to try to make a living as a working poet in the United States.”
Credits: This episode’s music is Ladder of Success by Ted Hawkins. The conversation was recorded at Charles’ home on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones