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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Category Archives: Creative Nonfiction

Episode 436: Alex Miller!

07 Monday Sep 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Essay

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 436 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

On this episode, personal essayist Alex Miller and I talk about the intimate power of the personal essay, pitches, politics, and universities in NYC.

Essays by Alex Miller

  • Read “When I Can’t Progress in my Love Life, I Level Up in Video Games” over at The Washington Post.
  • Read “Facing my Fear: I Was Always Scared of the Dark. Then PTSD Made it Even Worse” over at The Guardian.
  • Read “Kanye Made Me Love Being Black. That’s Why I Can’t Vote for Him” over at The Independent.
  • Read “Growing Up in the Shadow of Emmitt Till” over at The New York Daily News.

NOTES

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.


Episode 436 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Episode 433: Darin Strauss!

15 Saturday Aug 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Creative Nonfiction, Episode

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 433 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Darin Strauss

Photo by Robert Birnbaum.

On this episode, Darin Strauss and I discuss the utility of outlines, the utility of abandoning outlines, love, pain, stream-of-consciousness, love, Lucille Ball, Fred Trump, Coney Island, the semiotic intimacy of television, and love.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

The Queen of TuesdayChang and EngThe Real McCoyMore Than It Hurts YouHalf a LifeThe Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.


Episode 433 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Episode 401: Steve Almond and Carolyn Forché!

11 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Memoir

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 401 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

This week, I offer another round of conversations from Miami Book Fair International, in which I talk to Steve Almond about his favorite novel, Stoner by John Williams,

Steve Almond

plus I speak with poet Carolyn Forché about her memoir, All You Have Heard is True.

Carolyn_Forché_NBCC_2011_Shankbone.jpg

TEXTS DICSUSSED

Stoner

What You Have Heard is True

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Please help decide TDO’s future by filling out this 3-minute survey.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover

Episode 401 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

Episode 398: E. Jean Carroll and Jonathan Safran Foer!

23 Monday Dec 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Essay

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 398 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

I share two interviews this week. The first is with the great E. Jean Carroll,

and the second is with essayist and novelist, Jonathan Safran Foer.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Please help decide TDO’s future by filling out this 3-minute survey.


Episode 398 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.

Episode 397: Tim O’Brien, Chris Ware, and Chip Kidd!

14 Saturday Dec 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Memoir, War

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 397 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On today’s show, I share two interviews. The first is with the fiction writer and memoirist Tim O’Brien about how to live in this world.

I hope I said something funny here. We did laugh a bit.

The second is with the comic creator Chris Ware and his editor at Pantheon Books, Chip Kidd, with whom we discussed how design meshes with the content of a story.

Chris Ware, your humble host, and Chip Kidd.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Episode 385: Gilbert King!

21 Saturday Sep 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beneath a Ruthless Sun, Devil in the Grove, Gilbert King

Episode 385 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

GKHiRes

In this week’s episode, I talk with historian and crime writer Gilbert King about the history of justice and journalism, the role of luck in research, experimenting with presentation until a passage feels right, and how to manage one’s doubts when pursuing a writing project.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Beneath a Ruthless Sun.jpg

Devil in the Grove

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out my first interview with Gilbert back on episode 60!

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 385 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing).

Episode 377: Liz Prato!

27 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Essay, Travel Writing

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 377 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk with Liz Prato about being the best haole possible in Hawaii, the mixing of history and memoir, respecting the natural environment, and other important matters.

liz-prato-author-volcanoes-palmtrees-privilege

Photo by Jill Harriman Browning.

TEXT DISCUSSED

volcanos palm trees privilege

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Check out my debut novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 377 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

 

Episode 364: Elisa Gabbert!

27 Saturday Apr 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in AWP, Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Essay

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Black Ocean, Elisa Gabbert, The Word Pretty

Episode 364 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk with poet and essayist Elisa Gabbert about the excitement of short-form essays, the glories of book design, not reading Moby Dick, and other literary confessions.

Elisa Gabbert

Photo by John King

 

TEXTS DISCUSSED

The Word Prettymoby dick bill sienkiewicz.jpg

NOTES

If you are into literary adventure stories, please pick up a copy of my debut novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover


Episode 364 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Episode 354: Todd James Pierce

16 Saturday Feb 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Biography, Creative Nonfiction, Disney, Episode

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Disney history, Todd James Pierce, Walt Disney, Ward Kimball

Episode 354 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to Todd James Pierce about his new biography of Ward Kimball from an epic corridor of The Wilderness Lodge at Walt Disney World.

Todd Pierce Studios CROPPED June 2018

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Ward Kimball

Three Years in Wonderland

NOTES

Check out Todd’s site and podcast, The Disney History Institute.

Check out my previous interview with Todd back on Episode 218.


Episode 354 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Buzzed Books #85: Permanent Exhibit

08 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Buzzed Books, Creative Nonfiction

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Matthew Vollmer, Permanent Exhibit

Buzzed Books #85 by Drew Barth

Matthew Vollmer’s Permanent Exhibit

Think of a thought process and all the ways it branches out and around. The thoughts rarely stay in one place or along one singular train of thought for too long. It’s that aspect of his own mind that Matthew Vollmer examines in Permanent Exhibit. In this essay collection, he looks to examine not only what is happening in his mind, but what’s happening around it at all times.

permanent exhibit

The organic nature through which Vollmer shares himself in this collection really helps to reinforce both its structure and how the collection presents its content. We see first in “Status Update” the scene being set: it’s 2016 and this is like going through a Facebook feed. It’s a nonstop barrage of information until it cuts off. The essay is short, sweet, and gives us the founding seed through which the rest of the collection branches and grows. From there a reader is given Vollmer’s life during these essays—little bits of bike riding, the death industry, Grand Theft Auto, ruminations on the professor who changed his life. The essays build like concentric rings in a tree as they grow and crest upward.

It’s hard to talk about Permanent Exhibit without mentioning the collection’s structure. Forty-one essays and not a single paragraph break to be found. I love it. And for a few reasons. This helps to reinforce the idea of the mental process through which our minds go through when thinking—there’s no mental paragraph breaks, the brain simply takes a topic and runs with it. But in contrast, it helps to create this kind of focus throughout the essays. We as readers are engrossed in the words on the page because there’s nowhere for our eyes to wander and break from the flow. The essays are like a slideshow of images: focused and singular until we’re enamored with the next one. But they always stick to us no matter the subject. The structure presents us with a slab of words that makes us want to remember and devour the words before us so we can keep some of the beauty in them for a while longer.

And ultimately everything done with the essays is something that Vollmer does incredibly well throughout this collection—he makes the idea of the personal permanent. While some aspects of an individual change, there’s always this concrete, personal foundation that will subsist forever. And what Vollmer typifies here is what essay collections are: this deeply individual examination of the self and how that self interacts with the world around it.

The mind we’re peering into throughout this collection is one of compassion and principle. To go through this collection is to explore what is essentially Vollmer: the father, the husband, the man who bikes and plays video games. But his mind’s eye, the lens through which we see it all, always casts a light on small moments like enduring terrible pop music after his son’s dental checkup, the circus sideshow acts he saw as a child, or the articles his father emails him. He creates the meaning through observation.

It’s a universal experience, but the idea of this collection, his collection—the exhibit of the self and the personal permanence of the self—creates this fascinating look at Vollmer’s mind.


Drew Barth

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

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