Episode 429 – Nate Powell

Virtual Memories Show 429:
Nate Powell

“It was a lifesaver, having Congressman Lewis in my life during this period — his temperance, his playing the long game, his absolute lack of compromise on a moral and ethical level — a lot of this helped me on a personal basis.”

How will we remember (and recover from) the last 5 years? National Book Award-winning cartoonist Nate Powell‘s new collection, Save It For Later: Promises, Parenthood, and the Urgency of Protest (Abrams ComicArts) explores America’s fractures and its hopes for the future. We talk about the impetus of the book, how it follows his work adapting Rep. John Lewis‘ story in the MARCH trilogy, and how his conversations with the late congressman scared him even more about the impact of the previous presidential administration. We get into the Save It For Later‘s balancing act of memoir & essay, his decision to draw his kids as magical animals, what MARCH taught him about comics storytelling and how it influenced his recent work. We also discuss the irony of Gen X’s apolitical nature, Nate’s punk ethos, the combo of thrash metal & X-Men comics that instilled a social conscience in him, the delight of visiting the quarter bins in his childhood comic shop when he goes home, why not being an activist doesn’t equal being a defeatist, and a lot more. Give it a listen! And go read Save It For Later!

“The older I get, the more I feel that my generation is more strongly linked to the Baby Boomers than to Millennials, specifically by the erroneous assumption of the inevitability of social progress, by the privilege of assuming that things will naturally work out.”

APPLE PLAYER TK

“It’s not wrong that parents generally lose a lot of bandwidth to get involved with a lot of other work.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TuneIn, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Nate Powell is a National Book Award–winning cartoonist whose work includes civil rights icon John Lewis’s historic March trilogy, Come Again, Two Dead, Any Empire, Swallow Me Whole, and The Silence of Our Friends. Nate has also received the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, three Eisner Awards, the Michael L. Printz Award, the Comic-Con International Inkpot Award, two Ignatz Awards, and the Walter Dean Myers Award. He has discussed his work at the United Nations, on MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show, PBS, CNN, and Free Speech TV. He lives in Bloomington, Indiana. His new book is Save It For Later.

Follow Nate on Twitter and Instagram.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Nate by Ben Rains.

Episode 428 – Michael DeForge

Virtual Memories Show 428:
Michael DeForge

I think one of the ways art can be politically useful is by reimagining different ways of being.”

Cartoonist Michael DeForge joins the show to celebrate his amazing new graphic story collection, Heaven No Hell (Drawn & Quarterly). We get into his prolific comics career, his compulsion to jump genres, the ways we relitigate the traumas of our lives, and why he digs he self-imposed challenge of a daily comic strip (on top of his other comics and his illustration work). We get into how revolutionary politics permeates his art and how he engages in community activism, what it means to rethink our relationship to social media, why technology will always outpace his attempts at ridiculing it, and why Reading The Comments led him to explore a creative path when he was making Leaving Richard’s Valley. We also discuss the uses of absurdism & satire, how his dystopian stories have him rooting for utopian ideas, how he bullied his way into judging butter tart competitions, and more. Give it a listen! And go read Heaven No Hell and check out Birds of Maine!

“We take for granted that technology is developing in a certain way, and it’s up to us to mitigate the damage. I don’t think that’s true, and my current work is about an alternate view of technology.”

“I feel like my comics are still so far away from where I want them to be that I’m committed to continuing to focus on this medium.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TuneIn, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Michael DeForge lives in Toronto, Ontario. His comics and illustrations have been featured in Jacobin, The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Believer, The Walrus, The New Yorker and Maisonneuve Magazine. He worked as a designer on Adventure Time for six seasons. His published books include Very Casual, A Body Beneath, Ant Colony, First Year Healthy, Dressing, Big Kids, Sticks Angelica, Folk Hero, Leaving Richard’s Valley, Familiar Face, and A Western World. His new book is Heaven No Hell.

Follow Michael on Twitter and Instagram and follow his current serial, Birds Of Maine, on Instagram.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. That pic of Michael is by Matthew James-Wilson.

Episode 427 – Kate Lacour

Virtual Memories Show 427:
Kate Lacour

“The part of taxidermy that’s meaningful to me is my personal interest in interacting with physical bodies. There’s a lot of emotional weight and personal tickle involved.”

It’s been a year since I started the COVID Check-In series of podcasts, so I decided to return to the very first guest in that series, artist Kate Lacour, to celebrate! (You know what I mean.) We talk about how her life has changed over the course of a year in Pandemia, and how the urge to document those first few months gave way to other outlets. In her case, Kate rediscovered herself through taxidermy. We get into how she taught herself the rudiments of that art through YouTube and online groups, her philosophy of animals and bodies, the question of realism vs. subjectivity, and why New Orleans is an awfully good place to make a living as a taxidermist. We go deeper into what comics mean to her and how she may return to them, the post-pandemic trip she wants to take, what progress looks like in the sequence of animals she’s preserved, and more. Give it a listen! And go read Kate’s Vivisectionary!

(And listen to my first podcast with Kate and our COVID Check-In!)

“With the kids, I was in constant motion, so I was blessed to never have time to process those first few months.”

“I love being able to work from home, with my hands, in my own space/abattoir, which looks a bit like Texas Chainsaw, but it’s lovely and it’s my space. It’s been deeply life-changing.”

“I’m afraid of articulating visually something that’s important, but doing it poorly because I just wanted to get it out there, just wanted that gratification.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TuneIn, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Kate Lacour studied biology and psychology at the University of Chicago and Oberlin, and Art Therapy at the School of Visual Arts. She learned to draw through the Art Students’ League in New York City. Her art and comics are inspired by a love for the aesthetics of science and a fascination/revulsion towards bodies. Her book Vivisectionary was published by Fantagraphics in 2019. She is the winner of the 2016 Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art award, and has given art talks at the Society of Illustrators, American Art Therapy Conference, New Orleans Public Library, Antenna Gallery, Signals, and the Pharmacy Museum. Kate lives in New Orleans with her husband and three children.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photos by Kate. It’s on my instagram.

Episode 426 – Laura Lindstedt

Virtual Memories Show 426:
Laura Lindstedt

“I’m very aware that I see the world through a woman’s eyes and experiences. I think that all my novels do have female main characters and themes that can be considered feminist. There’s something that comes from my femininity into the writing, but it’s not without ambiguity.”

Finnish novelist Laura Lindstedt joins the show to celebrate the US publication of My Friend Natalia (Liveright, tr. David Hackston). We get into the challenges of translating a novel that’s all about the therapy sessions of an extremely literate and hypersexual patient, how the therapist’s method parallels Laura’s writing process, and my meta-theory of who’s actually narrating this amazing novel. We also talk about the influence of Nathalie Sarraute‘s poetics and the literary notion of Tropism (physical reaction of natural world), Helsinki’s book-life and how it’s changed in recent years, the joy of playing with the Finnish language and its etymologies, and the notion of gendered writing and why Laura chose to keep the narrator non-gendered (and why that made the audiobook a challenge). Plus, I get to founder over Finnish names, and Laura tells us the place she really wants to visit when we’re post-pandemic. Give it a listen! And go read My Friend Natalia!

“The layering therapy in the novel is based on artistic creation. It is parallel to writing itself. For my writing, I don’t have a plot line when I start. I don’t think of the work or characters at the beginning. I just start to write and the fictional world opens up little by little to me.”

APPLE PLAYER TK

“During the last 10 years, something has changed in Finnish literature. It’s become much more international, as books have become translated more and reached a wider audience.”

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TuneIn, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Laura Lindstedt is a Finnish author. She is a significant reformer of literary fiction and much discussed critical darling. Her first novel Sakset (“Scissors”) was published in 2007 and nominated for the Finlandia Prize, the most prestigious book award for fiction in Finland. Her second novel, Oneiron – a fantasy about the seconds after death, earned her the Finlandia Prize. Oneiron was also a candidate for the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2017. Her most recent novel is My Friend Natalia.

Follow Laura on Twitter and Instagram.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Fancy photo of Laura by Jarkko Mikkonen. It’s on my instagram.

Episode 425 – Vivian Gornick

Virtual Memories Show 425:
Vivian Gornick

“I’m a writer who developed around the practice of lucid, simple, compact writing. I turned out to be something of a minimalist. . . . but for a long time I felt myself a negligible writer because I couldn’t write big.”

Literary and feminist legend Vivian Gornick joins the show to celebrate her new collection, Taking A Long Look: Essays on Culture, Literature, and Feminism in Our Time (Verso Press). We talk about the biggest shock of looking back at her work for this career-spanning collection, why she organized it from most recent to oldest, and the difference between being smart and being wise. We get into the process of discovering her voice and figuring out she’s a minimalist, how she got better at judging her own work, her criteria for culling books from her apartment (and her embarrassment when one showed up in an unexpected place), the importance of rereading (and why she wrote a book about it), and why the New York Review of Books recently said she “has long enjoyed an audience of literary depressives and feminists”. We also discuss her 1970s essays on feminism, the movement’s evolution in the past 50 years, how the Brilliant Exception became the rule, why political correctness if different than ideological splits, the New York she loves most, and why she’s dying to go to a movie theater again. Give it a listen! And go read Taking a Long Look and Unfinished Business, and sheesh, all her other books, like Fierce Attachments!

“Our generation of feminists was unusual, not historically, but in terms of the lives we’re living now. Ours is the generation that raised it all over again. The generations that follow are somehow ground down because they don’t have that revolutionary excitement and energy.”

“If the thinking is sloppy, if it doesn’t justify itself, that’s the biggest shock in reading your own stuff.”

“Every year I go through my books and I ask, ‘Are you going to read this again? Are you EVER going to read this? Is this something I emotionally have to keep on the shelf?’

“If you have the talent and the drive — which are the least part of accomplishment — then if you live long enough and are privileged enough to become more and more yourself, then that’s the way the work should fulfill itself.”

TUNEIN PLAYER TK

Enjoy the conversation! Then check out the archives for more great episodes!

Lots of ways to follow The Virtual Memories Show! iTunes, Spotify, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, TuneIn, Tumblr, and RSS!

About our Guest

Vivian Gornick is a writer and critic whose work has received two National Book Critics Circle Award nominations and been collected in The Best American Essays 2014. Growing up in the Bronx amongst communists and socialists, Gornick became a legendary writer for Village Voice, chronicling the emergence of the feminist movement in the 1970s. Her works include the memoirs Fierce Attachments — ranked the best memoir of the last fifty years by The New York Times — and The Odd Woman and the City, and Unfinished Business: Notes of a Chronic Re-Reader, as well as the classic text on writing, The Situation and the Story.

Credits: This episode’s music is Fella by Hal Mayforth, used with permission from the artist. The conversation was recorded remotely via Zencastr. I used a Heil PR-40 Dynamic Studio Recording Microphone feeding into a Cloudlifter CL-1 and a Mackie Onyx Blackjack 2×2 USB Recording Interface. All processing and editing done in Adobe Audition CC. Photo of Vivian by someone else. It’s on my instagram.