• About
  • Cats Dig Hemingway
  • Guest Bookings
  • John King’s Publications
  • Literary Memes
  • Podcast Episode Guide
  • Store!
  • The Rogue’s Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Videos
  • Writing Craft Discussions

The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Category Archives: Creative Nonfiction

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.

Episode 348: Ben Fountain, Celeste Ng, and Gary Shteyngart!

05 Saturday Jan 2019

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Beautiful Country Burn Again, Ben Fountain, Celeste Ng, Gary Shteyngart, Lake Success, Little Fires Everywhere

Episode 348 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

This week has Miami Book Fair International conversations with Ben Fountain, Celeste Ng, and Gary Shteyngart!

Ben Fountain

Ben Fountain and beverages in the Confucius Institute at Miami-Dade College.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

beautiful country burn againlittle fires everywherelake success


Episode 348 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Episode 340: LaTanya McQueen!

10 Saturday Nov 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 340 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 creative nonfiction writer LaTanya McQueen about how our stories sometimes choose us, how to write a really good footnote, and how to try to talk about history and race in America.

LaTanya McQueen

TEXT DISCUSSED

And it Begins Like This

Episode 340 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

 

 

Episode 311: M. Evelina Galang!

21 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, History

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Lola's House: Filipino Women Living with War, M. Evelina Galang

Episode 311 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk to M. Evelina Galang about writing about the insistence of history, collaborating with other voices, being inspired by our elders, and conveying the true flux of language.

M Eveilna Galang color.jpg

Books Discussed

Lola's House.jpg


Episode 311 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Episode 310: Chelsey Clammer!

15 Sunday Apr 2018

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 310 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk to essayist Chelsey Clammer about the lyric essay, finding humor in trauma, and being honestly surprising.

Chelsea Clammer AWP

BOOKS DISCUSSED

Circadian.jpgBodyhome


Episode 310 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Episode 294: Ben Blum!

30 Saturday Dec 2017

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Journalism, Military Literature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

A Story of Soldiers Family and an Inexplicable Crime, Army Rangers, Ben Blum, Miami Book Fair International, NYU MFA, Ranger Games

Episode 294 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Ben Blum with John King.png

In this week’s episode, I catch up with Ben Blum, who was my colleague in a Jonathan Lethem workshop circa 2009, and talk about finding room for earnestness in a postmodern outlook, finding room for pleasure in a world sick with stimulation, and writing a challenging project that changes who you are as a writer.

TEXT DISCUSSED

Ranger Games

NOTES

The music used in this episode was “Sweet Spot,” “Chase,” “Chaotica,” and “As the Dark Wave Swells” by The Bambi Molesters.

All hail Mistie Watkins, content editor of The Drunken Odyssey.

Mistie Watkins 10

Photo by Shawn McKee.

Have you reviewed us on iTunes yet?

What is some of your favorite literature dealing with the military? Leave comments below.

 

Episode 290: Jacob Shores-Agüello

02 Saturday Dec 2017

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

≈ Leave a comment

Episode 290 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Jacob

This week I talk to Jacob Shores-Agüello, the resident of the Kerouac House in summer of 2017. We talk about the roles that genres play in the process of mourning, the improvistory games that can create a sense of shared culture, the glory of compression, and how to avoid the musical information car crashes that happen with prose.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Paraíso

NOTES

Check out the offerings at the Annie Russel Theatre.

Check out Burrow Press’s latest tome.

We Cant Help It If Were from Florida


Episode 290 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Episode 279: Leslie Salas!

23 Saturday Sep 2017

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Bethany Duvall, Burrow Press, David James Poissant, Denver Publishing Institute, leslie salas, Libretto of the Damned, Madison Strake Bernath, Other Orlandos, Ryan Rivas

Episode 279 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On this week’s show, I talk editing and publishing and writing and the post-MFA malaise with Leslie Salas.

Leslie Salas

TEXTS DISCUSSED

Other Orlandos

15 Views of Orlando

15 views 2

 

NOTES

Leslie Salas currently blogs for The Gloria Sirens, and is an editor at Sweet.


Episode 279 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

Episode 261: Sarah Gerard!

20 Saturday May 2017

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

≈ 2 Comments

Episode 261 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

On Episode 261, I interview the prose writer Sarah Gerard!

Sarah Gerard

Photo by Levi Walton.

TEXTS MENTIONED

Sunshine State
Binary Star

NOTES

The Promethean Conduit

The Promethean Conduit was a hell of a good show!

In Animal: a Beast of a Literary Magazine, here is my essay about the alligator incident at Walt Disney World.


Episode 261 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

← Older posts
Newer posts →
Scribophile, the online writing group for serious writers

Online, shop here:

If you must, shop Amazon and help the show.

Audible.com

Blogs

Not forgotten

Categories

  • 21st Century Bronte
  • A Word from the King
  • Aesthetic Drift
  • animation
  • Anime
  • Art
  • Autobiography
  • AWP
  • Biography
  • Blog Post
  • Bloomsday
  • Buddhism
  • Buzzed Books
  • Cheryl Strayed
  • Children's Literature
  • Christmas
  • Christmas literature
  • Comedy
  • Comic Books
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart
  • Craft of Fiction Writing
  • Creative Nonfiction
  • David Foster Wallace
  • David James Poissant
  • David Lynch
  • David Sedaris
  • Disney
  • Dispatches from the Funkstown Clarion
  • Doctor Who
  • Drinking
  • Dungeons and Dragons
  • Editing
  • Education
  • Episode
  • Erotic Literature
  • Essay
  • Fan Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Feminism
  • Film
  • Film Commentary
  • Flash Fiction
  • Florida Literature
  • Francesca Lia Block
  • Functionally Literate
  • Ghost writing
  • Graphic Novels
  • Gutter Space
  • Help me!
  • Heroes Never Rust
  • History
  • Horror
  • Humor
  • Hunter S. Thompson
  • In Boozo Veritas
  • Irish Literature
  • Jack Kerouac
  • James Bond
  • James Joyce
  • Jazz
  • Journalism
  • Kerouac House
  • Kung Fu
  • Like a Geek God
  • Literary Criticism
  • Literary Magazines
  • Literary Prizes
  • Literary rizes
  • Literature of Florida
  • Litlando
  • Live Show
  • Loading the Canon
  • Loose Lips Reading Series
  • Lost Chords & Serenades Divine
  • Magic Realism
  • Mailbag
  • manga
  • McMillan's Codex
  • Memoir
  • Miami Book Fair
  • Michael Caine
  • Military Literature
  • Mixtape
  • Music
  • New York City
  • O, Miami
  • Old Poem Revue
  • On Top of It
  • Pensive Prowler
  • Philosophy
  • Photography
  • Poetry
  • politics
  • Postmodernism
  • Publishing
  • Recommendation
  • Repeal Day
  • science
  • Science Fiction
  • Screenwriting
  • Sexuality
  • Shakespeare
  • Shakespearing
  • Sozzled Scribbler
  • Sports
  • Star Wars
  • Television
  • The Bible
  • The Curator of Schlock
  • The Global Barfly's Companion
  • The Lists
  • The Perfect Life
  • The Pink Fire Revue
  • The Rogue's Guide to Shakespeare on Film
  • Theater
  • There Will Be Words
  • translation
  • Travel Writing
  • Vanessa Blakeslee
  • Versify
  • Video Games
  • Violence
  • Virginia Woolf
  • War
  • Westerns
  • Word From the King
  • Young Adult
  • Your Next Beach Read
  • Zombies

Recent Posts

  • Episode 524: Yeoh Jo-Ann!
  • The Curator of Schlock #382: Dark Crimes
  • Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #175
  • Episode 523: Aaron Angello!
  • The Curator of Schlock #381: The Driver

Archives

  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Follow Following
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Join 3,107 other followers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • The Drunken Odyssey
    • Customize
    • Follow Following
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...