On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Erin Slaughter interviews Jenny Irish.

Jenny Irish is the author, most recently, of Hatch. She is also the author of the hybrid collections Common Ancestor and Tooth Box, the short-story collection I Am Faithful, and the chapbook Lupine.

Erin Slaughter is the author of the short story collection A Manual for How to Love Us and the poetry collections The Sorrow Festival, and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Realize That You Are the Sun. Her memoir, The Dead Dad Diaries, will be out with Autofocus Books in the fall of 2025.

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Full conversation topics include:

-- growing up in Maine / living in Arizona

-- an abandoned house in the woods

-- childhood imagination and stories

-- an unexpected MFA

-- working in academia

-- Jenny's recent essay in Salon, "Teacher Spice"

-- inhabiting a body

-- society's grading of appearance

-- scrutiny of the body in the workplace

-- Jenny's new book of poetry, Hatch

-- responding to the Trump presidency

-- the decision to have or not have a child

-- a metal womb and a cast of characters

--the violent division in America

-- the decision to stay in or leave academia

-- genre and hybridity

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Podcast theme music by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's his music project: Yeah Yeah Cool Cool.

The Lives of Writers is edited and produced by Michael Wheaton.