On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Kristine Langley Mahler interviews Dennis James Sweeney.

Kristine Langley Mahler is the author of three nonfiction books: A Calendar Is a Snakeskin (Autofocus Books, 2023), Curing Season: Artifacts (West Virginia University Press, 2022), and the erasure essay collection Teen Queen Training (forthcoming with Autofocus Books in 2026). Kristine is the director and publisher of Split/Lip Press.

Dennis James Sweeney is a cross-genre writer. His first book, In the Antarctic Circle, won the Autumn House Rising Writer Prize and was a Debut Poetry Book of 2021 in Poets & Writers. You’re the Woods Too, his second book, was a Small Press Distribution bestseller and a finalist for the Deborah Tall Lyric Essay Prize. Most recently, The Rolodex Happenings won the Stillhouse Press Novella Prize.

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Full conversation topics include:

-- slowing production

-- reading before bed

-- Dennis's forthcoming book How to Submit

-- small presses

-- hybridity

-- Dennis's first books

-- Dennis's essay Ghost/Home

-- photographs

-- Crohn's

-- Dennis's new novella, The Rolodex Happenings

-- imaginings and inventions and experiments

-- performance art

-- the gaps in our writing

-- artmaking

-- the gong moment

-- meaning-making

-- the real in the fiction

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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.

On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Kaycie Hall interviews Puloma Ghosh.

Kaycie Hall is the lead editor of our online journal Autofocus. She's also a writer and literary translator, whose work has appeared in Peach Mag, Neutral Spaces, Triangle House Review, and other journals.

Puloma Ghosh is the author of the debut short story collection Mouth (Astra House, 2024). Her work has appeared previously in One Story, CRAFT Literary, Cutleaf, and other publications.

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Full conversation topics include:

-- starting a new job after a layoff

-- balancing writing and illustration

-- elementary school notebooks

-- the short story collection MOUTH

-- putting together a collection after an MFA

-- being generous to a past self

-- Puloma's story "The Fig Tree"

-- story changes through drafts

-- elements of horror and supernatural

-- Puloma's stories "Anomaly" and "Natalia"

-- ordering the stories

-- working on novels

-- green M&M fanfic

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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.

On today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Joshua James Amberson interviews Tomas Moniz.

Tomas Moniz is the author of the novels Big Familia and, most recently, All Friends Are Necessary. He also edited the popular Rad Dad and Rad Families anthologies. He currently teaches at Berkeley City College and the Antioch MFA program.

Joshua James Amberson is the author of Staring Contest: Essays About Eyes, How to Forget Almost Everything: A Novel, a series of chapbooks, and the long-running Basic Paper Airplane zine series. He lives in Portland, Oregon where he runs the Antiquated Future online variety store and record label.

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FULL CONVERSATION topics include:

-- engaging with an audience post-publication

-- a book tour / honeymoon

-- working with a bigger press for the 1st time

-- zines and zine community

-- working on multiple projects

-- trying and failing to sell a book

-- growing up as not a reader or writer

-- the path to early zines and RAD DAD

-- writing and receiving letters

-- the new novel All Friends Are Necessary

-- editorial collaboration

-- playing with best and worst selves in fiction

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

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