Critical Literary Consumption

Mar 07 2025 58 ep. 44 mins 20

Critical Literary Consumption Podcast artwork

Join Anna Nguyen for a podcast that asks us to reflect on our reading and analyzing practices. Interviewing writers, authors, and academics, we'll discuss: what does it mean when we cite a text or when we activate the text? Are we giving authors the agency or do we take for granted the concepts we use? Find me on Instagram and Twitter @anannadroid .

Copy RSS

Subscribe on Podcast Addict

Form and Feelings (with Brandon Shimoda)

Mar 07 2025 48 mins

Brandon Shimoda discusses his pursuit of similar questions during his writing and research for his two longer books, The Grave on the Wall and The Afterlife is Letting Go, which are about Japanese American history, incarceration, violence, colonialism, ancestors, and family history. Both works are a blend of poetry and prose, which are woven as interviews, verse, and personal stori

Poetry As a Genre, a Form, a Method (with Chen Chen)

Dec 03 2024 64 mins

Chen Chen talks about genre, creative writing pedagogy, race, and politics as he reflects on his two full-length poetry collections, When I Grow Up I Want To Be A List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions) and Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced An Emergency (BOA Editions). On the topic of contextual and cultural references, we discussed our displeasure of the general tendency

On Completing the Mythic Triptych and Making Metaphors Literal (with K-Ming Chang)

Oct 29 2024 46 mins

To celebrate Halloween and the season of extremes, K-Ming Chang returns to discuss Organ Meats, which is the final story in her mythic triptych (or what she calls the “fecal trio”). She extends her thoughts on experimenting with maximalist language first and making metaphors literal. She also reflects on her process writing the tonally different novella Cecilia, which features

Troubling the Human + Material Witness/ing(with Aditi Machado)

Sep 30 2024 40 mins

Aditi Machado previews her upcoming poetry collection, Material Witness (Nightboat Books), and reflects on the concept and act of "witnessing". Witnessing then makes its poetic way into her questions of human/non-human relationality, plurality of subjects, language and etymology, and how we experience the world.

Legal Fictions & Blood Quantum (with Morgan Talty)

Aug 29 2024 47 mins

Morgan Talty shares his thoughts on this peculiar thing called genre and his experiences writing short stories (Night of the Living Rez) and a novel (his debut, Fire Exit). We talk about his reasons for writing from the perspective of a white character, and the bigger questions of colonization, the limitations of blood quantum, law, and the legal fictions associated with race and i

The Manicurist’s Daughter: On Nail Salons, On Revenge, On Justice, On Performing (with Susan Lieu)

Jul 31 2024 52 mins

My diaCritics book review focused and critiqued this ever recurring topic of nostalgia in diasporic memoirs, and Lieu shares her own thoughts on critical nostalgia, its connection to the tragedy of the living, and her desire to excavate her family memories. In capturing life as a Vietnamese American daughter in California during the 1990s, Lieu reflects on writing The Manicurist’

"To Think About Sex Work Differently, We Need to Think About Sex Differently" (with Dr. Juana María Rodríguez)

May 29 2024 45 mins

To think about sex work differently, Dr. Juana María Rodríguez (University of California, Berkeley) argues that we too will need to think about sex differently. Specifically, her project argues against merely ending the discussion at decriminalization, which essentializes sex work as stigma turned into law. In Puta Life: Seeing Latinas, Working Sex, she connects state surveillanc

Art Criticism and the Black Imagination (with Erica N. Cardwell)

Mar 29 2024 36 mins

Erica N. Cardwell reflects on writing Wrong Is Not My Name: Notes on (Black) Art, a possible anti-memoir that features essays on the importance of art criticism, visuality, grief, and radical Black imagination. Because the visual aspects of Cardwell's stories and analysis are so striking, she also shares stories of the art featured on the book cover and accompanying essays.

Afropessimism and Writing Shattered (with Dr. Matthieu Chapman)

Feb 29 2024 56 mins

Dr. Matthieu Chapman discusses his experiences with genre shift from academic writing to his beautiful hybrid memoir, Shattered: Fragments of a Black Life. He shares his thoughts on craft, genre, “the canon” in Early Modern Studies, the fallacy that Shakespeare is inclusive, and the importance of Afropessimism.

Essaying ‘The Loneliness Files” (with Athena Dixon)

Jan 31 2024 40 mins

At the beginning of the new year, I talked to Athena Dixon about the release of her latest book, The Loneliness Files: A Memoir in Essays. She shares how the book came to be and how she interrogated the concept of loneliness in all of its manifestations through research, personal life, fandoms, pop culture, technology, the pandemic, and more.