Curtis Ippolito joins us for a special episode/preview of season 2 to celebrate the release of his new novel Burying the Newspaper Man. We discuss character empathy and the delicacies of vulnerability, coming back to writing after time away, and the difficulty of not spoiling everything in this bone-chilling and wonderful book. 

We are joined by the lovely Izzy once more to discuss the varying aesthetics of academia, casual roasting of the Midwest, and whether Janet from the PTA is an adequate counter to Dad jokes. Nate reads a short story involving biting, repression, and religion, we are all definitely convinced that Dracula had purely feelings of friendship for Mina Harker.

We are still concerned Isabelle Hourihane is a figment of our imagination, but we love when she stops by. 

We are joined by recently New York Times cited author Cynthia Pelayo about her book, Children of Chicago, as well as her short story writing, genre-bending, and the human elements of horror. We admit, much gushing did occur.

We see each other for the first time since the start of quarantine and promise we will never record an episode outside again. We discuss one of Kirstyn's favorite books, Cosmopolis by Don DeLillo, butcher pronunciations and names, discuss human separation from emotion, and the downfall of capitalism. We also recorded this episode outside with cigars and whiskey and realized too late it was a mistake (recording outside, not the cigars and whiskey.)

The lovely Amy King joins us to discuss her research on linguistic violence, fourteen-year-old poetry, and obsessions with Greek mythology. We also go through some of Kirstyn's new novel, disappearing plot maps, and the best-backhanded compliment Nathan has ever received.

Amy is a PhD researcher exploring the nature of linguistic violence on social media, and digital communications professional for an intersectional feminist organization. Her undergrad degree in Linguistics fuelled a fascination for syntax and semantics, leading to her first exposure in editing - a play on the life and times of Francis Bacon - and further afield to theatre reviewing; scratching a musical theatre-shaped itch. In 2018 she founded The Feminist Fringe as a response to the often lackluster lists of Feminist Fringe Shows, and to inject a little feminist analysis in show reviews at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. With so much of her time spent pondering the nature of violence, both online and AFK, she often finds escape through poetry, short story collections, and her recently rekindled obsession with fanfiction.  In her own poetry and creative non-fiction she explores the uncertainty, discomfort and frustration of daily life with anxiety and depression - a habit she only got back into as the angst of her teens only heightened in an adulthood fraught with escalating political violence, societal decay and personal loss of recent years. She's also fond of embracing the rage of the now in-game by killing skaven, smashing chaos warriors and surviving the After Times through Vermintide 2.

You can find her on Twitter @Amy_CKing1

Rob Parker joins us to discuss his book Blackstoke, endless multitasking, transparency in publishing, and getting younger generations invested in writing. Also a conversation about great names for new indie publications (the team claims dibs on Trash Panda).

Nate and Kirstyn discuss the book Picnic in the Ruins by Todd Robert Petersen, and within it, the erasure of culture, representation in media, and the minor inaccuracies in movies and books that cause us much frustration.