Tag: Elizabeth Hand

Posted on

Episode 235 – Liz Hand and John Clute

Virtual Memories Show 235:
Liz Hand and John Clute

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

“I think of a collector as a gardener, rather than someone who just buys books. Like gardeners, they do a lot of murdering. They cull books.”

It’s another Readercon episode! First, Liz Hand rejoins the show for a little conversation about what she’s been reading lately (it’s some creepy stuff, of course), the regenerative aspects of Readercon, why the novella is ideal for dark/spooky fiction, and whether the attendee wearing an ASIA t-shirt is doing so ironically. Then John Clute talks about the ruins of futurity and the launch of the Clute Science Fiction Library at Telluride Institute. We get into the need for visual presentation and accessibility of original books in their context (including dust jackets), his transition from book accumulator to collector, the externalization of one’s mind into one’s library, why he doesn’t write fiction, the Easter eggs he sneaks into the Science Fiction Encyclopedia, why Galaxy Quest is the best Star Trek movie (except for Wrath of Khan), reaching a uniform degree of incompletion, generational shifts in SF/F, and the sneaky adoption of Fantastika. Give it a listen! And go buy Liz Hand’s new collection, Fire., and her Cass Neary novels: Generation Loss, Available Dark, and Hard Light!

“Most scholars, academic institutions, libraries are not interested in context. In that sense, the Science Fiction Library at Telluride is transgressive.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Twitter, Instagram, Soundcloud, Facebook, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guests

Elizabeth Hand flunked out of college a couple of years after seeing Patti Smith perform and became involved in the nascent punk scenes in DC and New York. From 1979 to 1986 she worked at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. She was eventually readmitted to university to study cultural anthropology and received her BA. She is the author of many novels, including The Winterlong Trilogy, Waking the Moon, Glimmering, Mortal Love, Illyria, and Radiant Days, and the Cass Neary novels, Generation Loss, Available Dark, and Hard Light, as well as three collections of stories, including Saffron and Brimstone. Her fiction has received the Nebula, World Fantasy, Mythopoeic, Tiptree, and International Horror Guild Awards, and her novels have been chosen as notable books by both The New York Times and The Washington Post. She has also been awarded a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. A regular contributor to The Washington Post Book World and the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, she lives with her family on the coast of Maine.

John Clute is a multiple Hugo Award and World Fantasy Award winner and Visiting Fellow at Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, England. He is perhaps best known for his editorship, with David Langford, and others, of the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (sf-encyclopedia.com). As an illustrious and prolific reviewer and essayist, he has profoundly influenced science fiction writing in his time.

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded at the Marriott in Quincy, MA during Readercon on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 Microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Liz Hand and John Clute in the Soundcloud by Scott Edelman; not sure who the other/younger one is by. Either way, they’re not on my instagram.

Posted on

Episode 195 – Thanksgiving 2016

thanksgiving-college-humor

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

For Thanksgiving this year, I decided to eschew the regular interview-based podcast and ask all of my past guests what they’re thankful for. Since it’s a mere couple of weeks from the 2016 U.S. Presidential election, responses were all over the spectrum. Give it a listen by MP3 download or iTunes. Here’s everyone who participated (with links to their episodes of the podcast):

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

A few guests sent along material in addition to their written or recorded responses. Liz Hand sent a link to this video about Lincolnville, ME’s Move It! Project:

Bob Eckstein (who you oughtta follow on Twitter at @bobeckstein) sent two of his cartoons, including the one at the top of this page:

low-first-3-d-thanksgiving

Jonathan C. Hyman’s contribution is the most involved, and requires a little unpacking. In the podcast, he says, “Despite the 2016 presidential election and the myriad social, environmental, and economic issues that have fractured our society, I am thankful that we are, and hopeful we will remain, a vibrant culture where people are free to speak openly and publicly.”

Background information and narrative: Known for his decade-long project which documents the vernacular public art, public speech, and memorial language that emerged across the United States in response to the 9/11 attacks, documentary photographer and past Virtual Memories guest Jonathan C. Hyman photographed the signage, displays, and public dialogue surrounding the 2016 presidential election.

His work on the election — including the seven images he contributed to this Thanksgiving podcast — is not meant to endorse or disparage Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, or their supporters. As a photographer with an interest in public expression — visual and speech — and in “things by the side of the road,” Hyman traveled within an approximate 150-mile radius from his home in Sullivan County, NY to areas in New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania.

Here, Hyman presents a sampling of the images in this series as they appeared when he came upon them. He photographed each display keeping in mind his interest in handmade objects, the American flag, and the houses, buildings, and neighborhoods people live and work in. The majority of the signs he saw, many handmade, were supportive of Donald Trump. The large majority of the handmade signs he encountered were displayed by Trump supporters on their own property. Realizing that his findings are anecdotal, Hyman says, “I have no doubt others have seen things I have not and that there were signs supporting Hillary Clinton in areas I have both visited and not traveled to. Nonetheless, it was clear to me that where pro-Hillary Clinton signs did exist, they tended to be of the more pre-fabricated, generic lawn sort and generally less likely to be on front lawns.”

Photographs © 2016 Jonathan C. Hyman All rights Reserved

Click to enlarge each picture:

flag-w-trump-sign-j-hymnan-photo

hasidic-boys-no-trump-j-hyman-photo

election-sign-public-speech-j-hyman-photo

election-2016-love-trumps-hate-j-hyman-photo-wm

election-2016-pay-me-or-else-j-hyman-photo

election-2016-vote-trump-dont-get-humped-j-hyman-photo

election-2016-eff-trump-j-hyman-photo

In addition to being featured on the PBS NewsHour, Hyman’s work has been featured in Time Magazine, The New York Times, the Journal of American History, and several well-known European newspapers and magazines in print and online. In the fall of 2008 Hyman toured Europe as a U.S. State Department Cultural Envoy (as part of a program organized by the American embassy in Vienna and the University of Graz, Austria.), lecturing at universities in Berlin and Tuebingen, Germany, Vienna and Graz Austria, Brno, Czech Republic, and Zagreb, Croatia about his 9/11 related photographs. In addition to lecturing publicly since 2002 at well known academic institutions, from 2008-2016 Hyman was Associate Director for Conflict and Visual Culture Initiatives at Bryn Mawr College’s Solomon Asch Center for Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict, where he also supervised the Center’s online gallery.

For More Information:

Jonathan C. Hyman can be reached at arthoops55@gmail.com

Late addition! Glenn Head writes in:

I really apologize for the delay, I just got married (something I’m deeply thankful for!) there’s been a lot on the plate, but then isn’t that true for everyone? Anyway, sorry.

At the moment I’m more hopeful than thankful, but one hope is that the people who voted in Trump actually did it for the reasons that they say (the economy, basically) and that what we saw at the rallies was a more a raucous party and letting off of steam then a sign of future mayhem. I hope that maybe things will calm down. Trump was a pitchman and a loudmouth for professional wrestling. He’s always said crazy shit for effect. Maybe — just maybe — things won’t go to hell. The tone in today’s NYTimes showed a guy who wasn’t hell-bent on being a hell-raiser. Of course being hopeful isn’t easy at a time like this. But maybe — just maybe — we’ll survive all of this.

I’m really thankful to be married. I found a good woman who loves me and I love in return, we shared our vows in front of friends and family at a great ceremony in a Brooklyn hotel and restaurant (the Whythe). It was a great party and I’m grateful for all of it.

I’m thankful as a comic book artist to be doing what I believe is the best work of my career….and I’m 58 years old too, so that feels miraculous! Very much so…

And even though I don’t read comics much these days I’m grateful for the medium itself, specifically underground comics, and even more specifically their greatest progenitor: R. Crumb. By never selling out he paved the way for others to do the same, and to focus on the art itself. He raised the bar for everyone — all cartoonists (who aren’t hacks!) owe him for that — Big Time!

I’m also thankful for the comix project I’m deep into right now: another memoir about childhood. It’s entitled “Chartwell Manor, a memoir in comics”. It’s about a boarding school I attended in Mendham, NJ in the early 1970s and the effect it’s had on my life. It’s shaping up really well and should be done in hopefully another year!

The thing I’m most thankful for is having such wonderful guests who are willing to pitch in to projects like this (and otherwise help keep me sane)!

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

Credits: This episode’s music is Nothing’s Gonna Bring Me Down by David Baerwald, used with permission of the artist. The episode was recorded primarily at stately Virtual Memories Manor on a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. Portions by Summer Pierre, Zachary D. Martin and Scott Edelman were recorded separately and shared by e-mail. All processing and editing was done in Adobe Audition CC. Cartoons by Bob Eckstein, photos by Jonathan C. Hyman.

Posted on

Episode 164 – Kliph Nesteroff (& Liz Hand)

9780802123985

Virtual Memories Show #164:
Kliph Nesteroff (& Liz Hand)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

“I was a Henry Morgan authority at the age of 24.”

26451704925_5cd9679b02_zKliph Nesteroff joins the show to talk about his new book, The Comedians: Drunks, Thieves, Scoundrels, and the History of American Comedy (Grove Press). We discuss the evolution of comedy over the century (from vaudeville to comedy podcasters) and how he got started chronicling it, American comedy’s twin themes of struggle and influence, the connect-the-dots game of comedic lineage, the stories that didn’t make it into the book, comedy’s role in the civil rights struggle, Kliph’s autodidactic background and how it shapes his pursuit of history, the story of how he got kicked out of high school, and more! Give it a listen! And go buy Kliph’s book, The Comedians! (NOTE: Kliph’s section starts at 17:15, if you wanna skip right to that)

“I’m just as deeply immersed in the history of film, the history of music, of TV, of pop culture. . . . But Leonard Maltin already exists; he’s got it cornered. Jerry Beck is the world’s foremost animation historian; he’s got that market covered. There’s a million people who write about music; I don’t need to be one of those guys. But there’s no other comedy historian. I’m happy to pick up that mantle.”

9781250030382Plus, I give Liz Hand a call on the occasion of the publication of her new book, Hard Light: A Cass Neary Crime Novel! We explore how her nihilistic, burned-out, drug-addicted post-punk-scene photographer-protagonist has grown over the course of three books of increasing mayhem and murder. (Hint: she doesn’t decide to become a nurturing mom and validate herself with a rich husband.) Go listen! And buy Hard Light! (NOTE: Liz’s section starts around 3:30)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

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

Kliph Nesteroff is a former stand-up comic turned writer. A longtime contributor to WFMU, writing about the history of comedy, Nesteroff’s latest project is hosting the Classic Showbiz Talk Show, a live series in Los Angeles that has welcomed comedy luminaries like Mel Brooks, Fred Willard and Laugh-In creator George Schlatter.

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 an undisclosed location in Manhattan on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on the same setup. The conversation with Liz Hand was recorded using Call Recorder on Face Time Audio; I was using a Blue Yeti USB mic. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photo of Kliph by me.

Posted on

Episode 126 – People From Away

Virtual Memories Show #126:
Liz Hand – People From Away

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

“When I was young, I always wanted to be a writer, but I thought that one could write science fiction and then also write ‘serious’ literature . . . that I could be Samuel R. Delany, but I could also be F. Scott Fitzgerald. That I could be Dorothy Parker, and I could be Angela Carter. But I found that you tend to get pigeonholed.”

wyldingAward-winning author Elizabeth Hand joins the Virtual Memories Show to talk about her new novel, Wylding Hall! We also talk about her need to try different genres, that pigeonholing process, how abandoning the supernatural for her Cass Neary novels was like working without a net, how her success at writing may be attributable to the Helsinki Bus Syndrome, what it was like to be at the punk scene in the mid-’70s, how she learned to strip down her prose for her recent (and excellent) noir crime novels, just how she ended up in coastal Maine, and more! Give it a listen!

“In the ’70s, I really wanted to be a photographer. I wanted to be a lot of things that I wasn’t. I wanted to be Lester Bangs. I wanted to be Patti Smith. I wanted to be all these things, but I had no talent for any of them. I was in the position of being the fan, the participant observer.”

The conversation also covers the changing models and markets of genre writing, the importance of fan interaction, why she loves coming to Readercon (where we recorded this episode), why it ultimately paid off to opt in favor of experience over college classes, and why her protagonist Cass Neary is like her “if my brake lines had been cut when I was 20 years old and I’d never been able to come back.”

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Spotify | TuneIn | RSS | More

We talk about a lot of books in this episode. Here’s a list of ’em:

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

lalizElizabeth Hand is the bestselling author of 13 genre-spanning novels and four collections of short fiction. Her work has received the World Fantasy Award (four times), Nebula Award (twice), Shirley Jackson Award (twice), International Horror Guild Award (three times), the Mythopoeic Award, and the James Tiptree, Jr. Award, among others, and several of her books have been New York Times and Washington Post Notable Books. Her recent, critically acclaimed novels featuring Cass Neary, “one of literature’s great noir anti-heroes” (Katherine Dunn) — Generation Loss, Available Dark, and the forthcoming Hard Light — have been compared to those of Patricia Highsmith. With Paul Witcover, Hand created DC Comic’s early 1990s cult series ANIMA, whose riot grrl superheroine dealt with homeless teenagers, drug abuse, the AIDS epidemic and racial violence, and featured DC Comics’ first openly gay teenager (the series also once guest-starred Conan O’Brien). Her 1999 play “The Have-Nots” was a finalist in London’s Fringe Theater Festival and went on to play at the Battersea Arts Center. She has written numerous novelizations of films, including Terry Gilliam’s Twelve Monkeys, and a popular series of Star Wars books for middle grade children. She is a longtime critic and book reviewer whose work appears regularly in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Salon, the Boston Review, among many others, and writes a regular column for the Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction. Her books and short fiction have been translated into numerous languages and have been optioned for film and television. She teaches at the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing, and recently joined the faculty of the Maine College of Art. She divides her time between the coast of Maine and North London, and is working on the fourth Cass Neary novel, The Book of Lamps and Banners.

Credits: This episode’s music is Three Hours by Nick Drake. The conversation was recorded at the Boston Marriott Burlington on a pair of Blue enCORE 200 microphones feeding into a Zoom H5 digital recorder. I recorded the intro and outro on a Blue Yeti USB Microphone. Processing was done in Audacity and Logic Pro. Photo of Ms. Hand by Norman Walters.