When Playboy Magazine accepted an Ursula LeGuin story in 1968, the editors had only one request for the young author: could they use the byline U.K. LeGuin, so Playboy’s readers didn’t know the story was written by a woman? This week we discuss the story, and the circumstances of its publication. Plus: what were creative writing grad programs like in 1968? We take a peek at the Iowa Writers Workshop, thanks to a lengthy feature story from The Chicago Tribune, which features beer bars, Kurt Vonnegut, and a woman who the author of the piece chooses to describe, unfortunately, as “stacked.”

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including our new Hunt for the Worst Book of All Time, which so far has included Ethan Frome, The Christmas Shoes, and Tucker Max’s I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell.

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Welcome to our Winter of Wayback season! This year we’re diving into 1968, a year that, like our current moment, has often been described as an inflection point in American politics. What we’d like to know: What was the world of literature like that year? Please join us, over the next several weeks, as we try to find out. This week: Tom Wolfe on surfers, slackers, and the culture of parentally-funded hippies.

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including a special episode next week, where we’ll be discussing a novel based on perhaps the most annoying holiday song of all time, The Christmas Shoes.

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It’s the most wonderful time of the year: when we break out the eggnog and suffer through a terrible Christmas-themed book so we can goof on it. This year’s selection is Swamp Santa, book 16 in Jana DeLeon’s Miss Fortune mystery series. We try to make sense of a rather convoluted plot, debate the relative merits of wacky parrots, and get lost in explanatory dialogue.

You can learn more about the universe of the novel at the Sinful, Louisiana website: http://sinfullouisiana.com/

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes, including a special episode next week, where we’ll be discussing a novel based on perhaps the most annoying holiday song of all time, The Christmas Shoes.

Stream or download the episode here:

Download Episode 351

This week we welcome two special guests–Amanda Meadows and Geoffrey Golden of the Dirt Cheap podcast–to discuss one of their favorite recent graphic novels: BTTM FDRS, by Ezra Clayton Daniels and Ben Passmore. The book has been compared to Jordan Peele’s film Get Out, and features a many-tentacled monster that inhabits an apartment building in a gentrifying Chicago neighborhood.

Our guests help us do some panel analysis of the book, and we talk about the horror genre, and dividing line between effective allegory and allegories that feel heavy-handed. We also talk about their podcast, in which they are reading a very bizarre-sounding pulp novel called Murder in the Glass Room, about an L.A. private investigator who is very obsessed with furniture and elevators.

As always, you can listen to the show right here on our site (stream or download below), or check us out in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes: Book Fight After Dark, where we explore various genres of romance novel, and Reading the Room, where we give writers (and readers) advice on how to live their lives.

Stream or download the episode here:

Download Episode 351

David Foster Wallace famously considered the lobster. This week, we consider him! How has his writing–and his legacy–aged in the nearly twenty years since his most well-known essays were published? Also: how mean should creative writing teachers be about lousy (or lazy) student work?

As always, you can listen to the show right here on our site (stream or download below), or check us out in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes: Book Fight After Dark, where we explore various genres of romance novel, and Reading the Room, where we give writers (and readers) advice on how to live their lives.

Stream or download the episode here:

Download Episode 351

This week, Mike picks an essay that exemplifies some of what he doesn’t love in contemporary writing about mental health. Too often, there’s a tendency to fall back on abstractions, cliches, and platitudes, rather than to do the (admittedly tough!) work of putting the reader inside the writer’s actual, lived experience.

In the second half of the show, we take one last dive into the NaNoWriMo forums to give our (semi-solicited?) advice to this year’s crop of would-be novelists.

As always, you can listen to the show right here on our site (stream or download below), or check us out in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes: Book Fight After Dark, where we explore various genres of romance novel, and Reading the Room, where we give writers (and readers) advice on how to live their lives.

Stream or download the episode here:

Download Episode 351

This week we’re talking Wikipedia vandalism, essays that show their editing work, and creative nonfiction that borrows moves from academic writing. Plus, another deep dive into the NaNoWriMo forums to help out this year’s crop of aspiring novelists.

This week’s reading is a David LeGault essay, “Revision and Collapse,” which was first published in Fourth Genre. Though as always, you don’t have to do the reading prior to listening to the episode.

As always, you can listen to the show right here on our site (stream or download below), or check us out in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes: Book Fight After Dark, where we explore various genres of romance novel, and Reading the Room, where we give writers (and readers) advice on how to live their lives.

Stream or download the episode here:

Download Episode 351

This week’s episode asks the question: Why aren’t conservatives funny? Or, put another way: Didn’t conservatives used to be funny? At least some of them? And could they ever be funny again?

More specifically, we revisit a P.J. O’Rourke essay from 1982, in which the author takes a cruise to the Soviet Union sponsored by the magazine The Nation, and spends most of his time drinking vodka with the Russians on-board while making fun of the insufferable American passengers, who are sort of like the parents from Family Ties except with even less self-awareness. Shooting fish in a barrel, maybe, but also: what annoying fish!

In the second half of the show, we dig back into the NaNoWriMo forums to offer our (semi-solicited?) advice to this year’s crop of aspiring novelists.

As always, you can listen to the show right here on our site (stream or download below), or check us out in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes: Book Fight After Dark, where we explore various genres of romance novel, and Reading the Room, where we give writers (and readers) advice on how to live their lives.

Stream or download the episode here:

Download Episode 351

This week we’re talking about professional wrestling, essays with unusual structures, troubled father-son relationships, and what it’s like to be one of the only non-white kids at your school. Plus: it’s still November, which means we’re digging into the NaNoWriMo forums to answer some of the internet’s weirdest questions about writing a novel.

Our reading for the week was Todd Kaneko’s essay “Babyfaces,” originally published in a pop-culture anthology by Barrelhouse Magazine.

As always, you can listen to the show right here on our site (stream or download below), or check us out in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes: Book Fight After Dark, where we explore various genres of romance novel, and Reading the Room, where we give writers (and readers) advice on how to live their lives.

Stream or download the episode here:

Download Episode 351

This week: writing about money and social class; righteous anger; and essays that spark actual class debate. Plus we begin out month-long dive into the National Novel Writing Month forums, to offer our (semi-solicited?) advice to this year’s crop of prospective authors.

Our reading for the week was “The Gifted Classes” by Frances Lefkowitz, originally published in The Sun.

As always, you can listen to the show right here on our site (stream or download below), or check us out in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you get your podcasts.

If you like the show, and you’d like to have some more of it in your life, you can subscribe to our Patreon for $5 a month and get access to our entire catalog of bonus episodes: Book Fight After Dark, where we explore various genres of romance novel, and Reading the Room, where we give writers (and readers) advice on how to live their lives.

Stream or download the episode here:

Download Episode 350