Talking Writing

<p>Lisa Borders, author of three novels, talks with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about her newest book. <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://bookshop.org/a/20181/9781646036448"><em>Last Night at the Disco</em></a> (Regal House Publishing, 2025) is a fictitious memoir framed as a letter to the former editor of <em>Rolling Stone</em>, Jann Wenner. That context gives the audience their first clue about the book’s narrator, Lynda Boyle.</p><p>The introduction to the letter also gives us a few other vague references to crimes, the loss of a teaching position, and a “coke-fueled disco queen” that help fill in a few blanks while raising many more questions.</p><p>Although humor had always been a part of Lisa’s personality and writing, for a time she leaned away from it. Her first two books, <em>Cloud Cuckoo Land</em> and <em>The Fifty-First State</em>, reflected this shift, but starting around 2016—as she developed the tone for what would become <em>Last Night at the Disco</em>—she started focusing on humor, including writing a submission for McSweeney's Internet Tendency over the course of a year. That piece was accepted and published as “<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/signs-that-you-are-a-gen-xer-going-through-menopause">Signs That You Are a Gen-Xer Going Through Menopause</a>,” which went viral.</p><p>In this interview the two discuss narrator Lynda Boyle, satirizing avant-garde poets, and her need to make art as the world falls apart.</p>

<p>For this episode TW creative director John Vogel sat down with television writer and showrunner Michael Jamin about his collection of personal essays, <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://michaeljamin.com/book/"><em>A Paper Orchestra</em></a>.</p><p>Michael’s television career started in the mid-90’s with an episode of <em>Lois and Clark</em>, followed by more involved work on <em>Just Shoot Me!</em> and <em>King of the Hill</em>. Other writing and production credits include <em>Beavis and Butthead</em>, <em>Rules of Engagement</em>, <em>Maron</em>, and <em>Wilfred</em>.</p><p>He self-published <em>A Paper Orchestra</em> through his company 3 Girls Jumping, and the book was named one of the best comedy books of 2024 by Vulture. Partially inspired by David Sedaris, Michael has also developed a stage show of the essays that has evolved from readings to reenacted performances of the scenes. In this conversation Michael and John talk about different themes throughout the essays, his transition to the stage, and balancing family life with work.</p>

<p>Author and musician Antonio Michael Downing sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about Antonio Michael's books <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Black-Cherokee/Antonio-Michael-Downing/9781668066102"><em>Black Cherokee</em></a> and <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://milkweed.org/book/saga-boy"><em>Saga Boy</em></a>, music audience expectation regarding race and incorporating varied genres, and the disregard of the tech industry when it comes to profiting off of the work of artists without compensation.</p><p>If his memoir <em>Saga Boy</em> is a personal story grappling with the effects of colonialism on his psychology, his first full-length novel, <em>Black Cherokee</em>, is a story constructed to show the ways that everyone is living underneath unseen layers of history that they don’t understand.</p><p>The story follows Ophelia Blue Rivers, whose Black grandmother married the Cherokee Chief Trouthands, through four slices of time from 1993 to 2005. The book begins with Grandma Blue raising her on the Cherokee reservation while the disbanded tribe figures out how to handle a cattle farm that’s polluting the river. When she’s shipped off to live with her aunt in the nearby town, Ophelia has to integrate herself into typical southern society and finding temporary fellowship in a Baptist church. As she enters high school, she again has to assimilate, this time into affluent white society.</p><p>This episode is scored with the John Orpheus song, “<a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://johnorpheus007.bandcamp.com/track/fela-awoke-i-will-miss-you">Fela Awoke (I Will Miss You)</a>.”</p>

<p>Multidisciplinary writer Joanna Walsh sits down with TW creative director John Vogel to talk about <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.versobooks.com/products/2862-amateurs"><em>Amateurs! How We Built Internet Culture and Why It Matters</em></a>. When Joanna first started writing, lacking IRL community and instruction, she turned early Twitter to find likeminded others to share work with. It wasn’t until after she’d been working as an artist that the schooling aspect came into play, getting her PhD in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia and a MSCA postdoctoral fellowship at Maynooth University.</p><p>Joanna also founded and ran two activist campaigns on Twitter—@read_women, a movement dedicated to equal treatment for women writers, and @no_entryarts to reshape ideas about age in the arts—and wrote twelve fiction and nonfiction books, including two co-written with self-coded AI.</p><p>In this conversation, the two discuss aesthetics through history, funding structures for the arts, and how policy affects access to who’s able to practice art.</p>

<p><a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://kollektiv.studio/">Pia Leichter</a>, founder of Kollektiv Studio and author of Welcome to the Creative Club, talks with TW creative director John Vogel about her experience transitioning from the advertising world to the artistic path. A big shift happened in her life about ten years ago, and Pia delves into some very personal details about the events that brought about that shift. As she said in our conversation: “I wasn’t expecting to share such vulnerable stories at all. I mean, I shared stuff some of my closest friends didn’t even know about me.”</p><p>The two discuss Pia’s experience with self-promoting her book, the role of the brain’s default mode network in the creative act, and the presence of the cosmos in all people. Also included in the episode are three tracks from her collaborative spoken word album <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://music.apple.com/us/album/famished/1834258106"><em>Famished</em></a> with electronic composer <a target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="https://www.instagram.com/bodkins/">Tyler Bodkins</a>. All the music in the episode came from that album.</p>