Keep The Channel Open

The poems in Abbie Kiefer’s debut collection, Certain Shelter, are, in my reading, about aftermath. They are about grief and loss, whether that is the loss of the speaker’s mother to cancer or her hometown’s changing landscape. But they are also about change and rebirth, and both the anxiety and the possibility of an unknown future. In our conversation, Abbie and I talked about television as a touch point in her poems, how memory is layered, and how ephemerality is central to the human experience. Then for the second segment, we talked about doing things you’re not good at. (Recorded February 7, 2025) Bonus Reading: Subscribers to the Likewise Media Patreon campaign can hear Abbie read her poem “I’ve Learned to Accept.” Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Abbie Kiefer Purchase Certain Shelter: Print (Portland, ME) | June Road Press

The paintings in Marisa DeLuca’s series Spectre document the changing urban landscape of the city she lives in—Oceanside, California—mourning spaces made ephemeral by the forces of gentrification. In our conversation we talked about the difference between painting and photography, how process affects the ontology of an art object, how audiences make meaning, and the intersection of art and activism. Then for the second segment, Marisa and I talked about spirit of place and the importance of the commons in communities. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Marisa DeLuca HereIn - Marisa DeLuca with Herein San Diego Union-Tribune - Saving what was: Oceanside artist captures on canvas memories of her fast-changing city Marisa DeLuca - E. G. Dérive Marisa DeLuca - Beloved Marisa DeLuca - Or No Side Marisa DeLuca - Keeper Hauntology Grant K

In the wake of this year’s election, I found myself feeling a lot of things, but most of all that what sustains us through difficult times is always relationships and community. So I reached out to some past guests of the show and invited them to share some updates about where they are, who they’re connected to, and how they’re thinking about their work right now. At the end of the episode, I close by sharing a clip from the latest episode of Hey, It’s Me. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Commonplace - Episode 86: Global Roll Call, Part 1 José Pablo Iriarte Jennifer Baker Lisa M. Robinson Susan Rosenberg Jones Gabrielle Bates André Ramos-Woodard Maggie Tokuda-Hall Alanna Airitam Alyssa Harad David Naimon Becky Senf Amanda Marchand Matthew Salesses Rachel Zucker Hey, It’s Me - Episode 13: Bring Your Whole Self, Including Your Hopelessness

Perry Janes’s debut poetry collection, Find Me When You’re Ready, follows its speaker from childhood in Detroit to young adulthood in Los Angeles, a coming-of-age story in five acts, told through a series of lyric moments. The poems in this collection confront childhood sexual abuse and the story of what it means to be a man, ultimately reaching toward healing and love. In our conversation we talked about what poetry and prose do differently, how masculinity is presented in these poems, and why it was important to both include trauma but not dwell in it. For the second segment, we talked about attention and how hard it can be to focus. (Recorded November 12, 2024) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Perry Janes Purchase Find Me When You’re Ready: Book Soup (Los Angeles, CA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Natalie

Writer Sarah Gailey returns to the show for a discussion about their new novella, Have You Eaten? This serialized story follows four young queer characters as they traverse an America in the process of collapse, taking care of each other along the way. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about experimentation in fiction, vine-ripened tomatoes, cooking as an act of care, and what apocalypse means. Then for the second segment, we talked about why we re-recorded the second segment, sin-flattening and high-control groups, the necessity of interpersonal repair. (Episode recorded September 27, 2024 and September 30, 2024) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Sarah Gailey Purchase Have You Eaten? (e-book): Kobo | Apple Books | Amazon Sarah Gailey - “STET” Keep the Channel Open - Episode 109: Sarah Gailey (When We Were

In the opening poem of Rachel Edelman’s debut collection, Dear Memphis, the speaker returns to their home city after a long time away, traversing a landscape that is both familiar and foreign, a place to which she belongs but also doesn’t. Over the course of the collection, Edelman asks questions about heritage and inheritance; about exile, diaspora, and migration; about home; about marginalization and privilege, oppression and complicity. In our conversation, we talked about acts of care, the importance of self-criticality, what poems do, and the necessary and the possible. Then for the second segment, we talked about corresponding via hand-written letters. (Recorded June 28, 2024) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Rachel Edelman Purchase Dear Memphis: Open Books (Seattle, WA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA)

Writer, editor, and podcaster Jennifer Baker’s debut YA novel, Forgive Me Not, imagines a near-future America in which the juvenile criminal justice system has been “reformed” to allow young people to undergo grueling Trials instead of incarceration. It’s an incisive and powerful story about carceral justice, as well as a moving coming-of-age and family story. In our conversation we talked about writing about serious topics for younger readers, how she approached writing her characters, and why it was important for her to focus on systems rather than individual innocence or guilt. Then for the second segment we talked about finding inspiration in other art forms. (Recorded April 3, 2024.) SUBSCRIBE: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Jennifer Baker Purchase Forgive Me Not: Kew & Willow Books (Kew Gardens, NY) | The Book

Writer Rachel Lyon returns to the show to discuss her latest novel, Fruit of the Dead, a contemporary retelling of the Persephone myth in which a young woman is seduced by wealth and privilege in a story about addiction, class, sexual assault, and power. In our conversation, we talked about how malleable identity can be during adolescence and how that informed how she wrote the character of Cory, how family members do and don’t see each other, and why it was important for the characters in this story to have agency. Then for the second segment we talked about stages of life. (Recorded June 28, 2024.) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Rachel Lyon Purchase Fruit of the Dead: Broadside Bookshop (Northampton, MA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Rachel Lyon - Self-Portrait with Boy Keep the Channel

Introducing Hey, It's Me! I'm happy to announce a new podcast from me and my friend Rachel Zucker, Hey, It's Me! Here's the first episode as a bonus for KTCO listeners. Enjoy! Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Pocket Casts Overcast RSS Web

For this KTCO Book Club conversation, poet Amorak Huey joins me to discuss Layli Long Soldier’s 2017 poetry collection, Whereas. In our conversation, we talked about the way the poems confront language, what language means in the context of forced assimilation, and how the poems engage with both history and contemporary reality. (Recorded March 26, 2024) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Amorak Huey Purchase Whereas: Gathering Volumes (Parisburg, OH) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Purchase Dad Jokes from Late in the Patriarchy Congressional Resolution of Apology to Native Americans Between the Covers - Layli Long Soldier : Whereas R. F. Kuang - Babel Transcript Episode Credits Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa Music: Podington Bear Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

For this KTCO Book Club conversation, I’m joined by writer and group facilitator Martha Crawford for a discussion about Ingrid Rojas Contreras’s 2023 memoir, The Man Who Could Move Clouds. In our conversation, Martha and I talked about different ways of knowing, how to read across cultures without being extractive, storytelling as healing, and what identity means in the context of forgetting. (Recorded March 9, 2024) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Martha Crawford Purchase The Man Who Could Move Clouds, by Ingrid Rojas Contreras: The Collected Works Bookstore (Santa Fe, NM) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Vine Deloria, Jr. Hildegard of Bingen Thomas Merton - “The Door That Ends All Doors” Transcript Episode Credits Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa Music: Podington Bear Transcription: Shea A

Writer and friend José Pablo Iriarte returns to the show to discuss their debut middle-grade novel, Benny Ramirez and the Nearly Departed. In our conversation, we talked about building stories without antagonists, writing for young readers, and what makes coming-of-age stories such an enduring phenomenon. Then for the second segment, we talked about the importance of storytelling in creating empathy and connection in our incredibly divided society. (Recorded April 6, 2024.) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: José Pablo Iriarte Purchase Benny Ramírez and the Nearly Departed: White Rose Books (Kissimmee, FL) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Keep the Channel Open - Episode 23: José Iriarte José Pablo Iriarte - “Proof by Induction” José Pablo Iriarte - “The Substance of My Lives, the Accidents of Our

Sarah Rose Etter is a writer based in Los Angeles, CA. In Sarah’s latest novel, Ripe, a young woman is trapped in a dream-job-turned-corporate-nightmare at a cutthroat Silicon Valley tech startup. Her bosses are capricious and cruel, the city she lives in is crumbling under late capitalism, and everywhere she goes she is followed by her own personal black hole. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about the relationship between her surrealist fiction and poetry, why visual art is important to her, and what it means for a character to have agency. Then for the second segment we discussed dead authors, reading in translation, and creative insecurity. (Recorded March 2, 2024.) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Sarah Rose Etter Purchase Ripe: Skylight Books (Los Angeles, CA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | B

For this KTCO “Book” Club conversation, writer Maggie Tokuda-Hall returns to the show to talk about the game Baldur’s Gate 3. In our conversation, Maggie and I talked about what it’s like to experience a story with so many branching paths, how player choices reflect the player’s personality, as well as some standout storytelling moments from the game. (Recorded February 9, 2024.) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Maggie Tokuda-Hall Purchase Baldur’s Gate 3 Purchase The Siren, the Song, and the Spy Preorder The Worst Ronin Pools of Darkness Unlimited Adventures Icewind Dale Baldur’s Gate 2 Octopath Traveler The Last of Us The Adventure Zone Dungeons & Daddies Neil Newbon Roger Ebert - “Video games can never be art” The Brothers Sun Sarah Lotz - The Impossible Us Transcript Episode Credits Editing/Mixing: Mi

Olatunde Osinaike is a poet based in Atlanta, GA. In his debut full-length poetry collection, Tender Headed, Olatunde explores Black masculinity, both celebrating and interrogating it in his sonically virtuosic poems. We talked about his approach to poetry, what poetic lineage means to him, and the silences inherent in patriarchy. Then for the second segment, we talked about departure albums and André 3000’s New Blue Sun. (Recorded January 20, 2024.) Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Newsletter | Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Olatunde Osinaike Purchase Tender Headed: 44th and 3rd Booksellers (Atlanta, GA) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Akashic Books (publisher) Olatunde Osinaike - Upcoming Events Bonus Reading for Patreon Subscribers: Olatunde Osinaike reads “Being Human Takes a Lot of Nerve” Etheridge Knight - “The Sun Came” Gwendolyn

For this KTCO Book Club conversation, poet and podcaster Rachel Zucker returns to the show to discuss Eugenia Leigh’s poetry collection Bianca. In our conversation, we talked about our approaches to talking about books with their authors, how form shapes how we take in intense subject matter in a poem, and how a book can be a means of connection. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Connect: Newsletter | Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Rachel Zucker Purchase Bianca: Print (Portland, ME) | The Book Catapult (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Eugenia Leigh James Schuyler - “This Dark Apartment” Jack Kornfield - “Transform Your Life Through Jack Kornfield’s Most Powerful Stories: A 10 Hour Journey” Transcript Episode Credits Editing/Mixing: Mike Sakasegawa Music: Podington Bear Transcription: Shea Aguinaldo

Gerardo Sámano Córdova is a writer and artist from Mexico City. In his debut novel, Monstrilio, Gerardo draws from both horror and literary fiction traditions to tell a story about grief, family, and self-acceptance. In our conversation, Gerardo and I talked about genre expectations, genre fiction as a site of art, and what it means to be monstrous. For the second segment, we talked about the tension between fulfilling your own artistic vision and creating work that will sell. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Share: Tweet this episode | Share to Facebook Connect: Newsletter | Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Gerardo Sámano Córdova Purchase Monstrilio: Books Are Magic (Brooklyn, NY) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Paul Semel - “Exclusive Interview: ‘Monstrilio’ Author Gerardo Sámano Córdova” At Home with Literati: Gerardo Sámano Córdov

Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah is a writer based in the Bronx, NY. In his debut novel, Chain-Gang All-Stars, Nana presents us with a dystopian future America where convicted prisoners fight each other to the death in a televised bloodsport. The book is both a blistering critique of the US carceral system and an insistence on the inalienable humanity of every person. In our conversation, Nana and I talked about what satire and dystopia open up for him as a writer, why it’s important to him to implicate both the reader and himself in his work, and how he thinks about prison abolition. Then in the second segment, we talked about the seductive nature of success as an artist in a capitalist society. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Stitcher | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Share: Tweet this episode | Share to Facebook Connect: Newsletter | Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Nana Kwame Adjei-Breny

Rachel Zucker is a writer, podcast, and teacher based in New York and Maine. Her latest book, The Poetics of Wrongness, is a collection of essays (originally written and performed for the Bagley Wright Lecture Series) delving into her own poetics, motherhood, the history of confessional poetry, and the ethics of “say everything” poetry. In our conversation, Rachel and I talked about wrongness as a stance against moral purity, about addiction to doubt, and about poetry as an opportunity to create outside of capitalism. Then in the second segment, we talked about her new project, the Commonplace School for Embodied Poetics. Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Stitcher | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Share: Tweet this episode | Share to Facebook Connect: Newsletter | Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Rachel Zucker Purchase The Poetics of Wrongness: Print (Portland, ME) | The Book Catapult

For our latest KTCO Book Club episode, writer Sarah Gailey joins us for a discussion of H. A. Clarke’s YA novels The Scapegracers and The Scratch Daughters. In our conversation, Sarah and I talked about the ways Clarke’s novels subvert genre expectations, about the quality of teen girls’ rage, and about why these books are “capital-I Important.” Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Google Podcasts | Pocket Casts | Stitcher | Goodpods | TuneIn | RSS Support: Support our Patreon | Review on Apple Podcasts | Review on Podchaser Share: Tweet this episode | Share to Facebook Connect: Newsletter | Email | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | YouTube Show Notes: Sarah Gailey Purchase The Scapegracers: Loyalty (Washington, DC) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Purchase The Scratch Daughters: Loyalty (Washington, DC) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Purchase Just Like Home: Loyalty (Washington, DC) | Mysterious Galaxy (San Diego, CA) | Bookshop.org Subscribe to The Personal Canons Cookbook The C