The Virtual Memories Show

Author-playwright-screenwriter-poet Jen Silverman returns to the show to celebrate their amazing new novel, THERE'S GOING TO BE TROUBLE (Random House). We get into how Jen accidentally stumbled into the 2018 Gilets Jaunes protests in Paris and triggered this new book, the ways we're shaped by our parents' failures and secrets, the many routes of radicalization, and the theatricalit

With Reading Shakespeare Reading Me (Fordham), professor Leonard Barkan blends memoir and deep reading of Shakespeare's greatest plays to explore his lifelong relationship with literature and the way(s) we use art to construct our identities. We get into what it means to read, hear, perform, direct, teach Shakespeare, why it took him a lifetime to get to this book, how he contrasts

After a ~10-year gap, Emily Raboteau rejoins the show to celebrate her amazing new essay collection, LESSONS FOR SURVIVAL: Mothering Against "The Apocalypse" (Holt). We talk about her sparkbird and the Audubon Mural Project in Washington Heights that center the book, her transformation into a climate activist, the joy of the flaneuse, her scavenger hunt for Justin Brice Guariglia's

Photographer and writer Kyle Cassidy and actor and model Trillian Stars join us for a Bonus Episode to talk about their new Kickstarter, THIS IS ONLY EARTH, MY DEAR – POEMS & PHOTOS (closing May 4, 2024)! We get into their inspiration to make a book combining the poems of Pre-Raphaelite muse/model/artist Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal with photos of Trillian (in a Pre-Raphaelite mode),

At long last, artist Leela Corman joins the show as we celebrate her breathtaking new graphic novel, VICTORY PARADE (Schocken Books)! We talk about how the book brings together the women welders of WWII-era Brooklyn Navy Yards, professional wrestling, and her lifelong obsession with the Shoah, how discovering her watercolor style was like the portal between life and death opening,

How did an eBay search lead to the discovery of a lost classic of comics? How can art help us build a better America? Artist and teacher Keith Mayerson joins the show to talk about co-editing the amazing new book, Frank Johnson: Secret Pioneer of American Comics, Vol. 1 (Fantagraphics) and his multi-decade "wordless novel" in paintings, My American Dream (Karma). We get into how Fr

Classicist Edith Hall joins the show to talk about her fantastic, important new book, FACING DOWN THE FURIES: Suicide, the Ancient Greeks, and Me (Yale University Press). We talk about the taboo of talking about suicide, how that taboo can lead to transgenerational damage, how that compares to the family curses in Greek tragedies, and what the Tragedians have to teach us about life

LEAN INTO DEAN! Cartoonist, playwright, schmoozer, etc. Dean Haspiel returns for a Bonus Episode to talk about his new Kickstarter, THE RED HOOK X DEAN HASPIEL (closing March 28, 2024)! We get into why he's making the plunge into Meta-Mem-Noir and bringing Dean Haspiel as a character into his New Brooklyn comics universe, what it's like to be part of the story, and how this podcast

With his brand new collection, THE WEREWOLF AT DUSK and Other Stories (Liveright), David Small brings us a trio of stories about the beast within (that is, within the heart, within the psyche, and within the body politic). We talk about the on-and-off 40-year history of this collection, the themes of transformation and aging that suffuse these stories, and the schism in Leonora Car

With RADIANT: The Life and Line of Keith Haring (Harper), Brad Gooch brings us the biography of Keith Haring, an artist who transformed public art & the art world in the 1980s and whose work has become part of global culture in the three decades since his untimely death from AIDS. We get into Brad's common threads with Haring, the parallels between this book and his biography of Ru