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.

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.

In today's episode of The Lives of Writers, Sara Rauch interviews Ursula Villarreal-Moura.

Ursula Villarreal-Moura is the author of Math for the Self Crippling and Like Happiness. Her stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines including Tin House, Catapult, Prairie Schooner, Midnight Breakfast, Washington Square, Story, Bennington Review, Wigleaf Top 50, and Gulf Coast.

Sara Rauch is the author of the book-length essay XO, from us at Autofocus Books. She’s also the author of the story collection, What Shines from it, from Alternating Current Press. Her book reviews and author interviews have been featured in the LA Review of Books, Newcity Lit, Lambda Literary, The Rumpus, and elsewhere.

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Conversation topics include:

-- teaching college English remotely

-- bilingual teaching with AmeriCorps

-- learning to read like learning to drive

-- the switch from poetry to fiction

-- endometriosis

-- finding a community through flash

-- selling a novel that didn't sell

-- the debut novel Like Happiness

-- two timelines

-- not writing in third person

-- ambiguity

-- stories we tell ourselves

--looking away

-- healing in the right environment

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Podcast theme music provided by Mike Nagel, author of Duplex and Culdesac. Here's more of his 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, Jason McCall interviews Brooke Champagne.

Brooke Champagne is the author of Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy. Her writing appears widely in literary journals and has received various awards, including the inaugural William Bradley Prize for the Essay for her work “Exercises.” Her essays have been selected as Notables in several editions of Best American Essays. She is the recipient of the 2023-2024 Alabama State Council on the Arts Literary Fellowship in Prose. She lives with her husband and children in Tuscaloosa, where she is an Assistant Professor of English in the MFA Program in creative writing at the University of Alabama.

Jason McCall is the author of the essay collection Razed by TV Sets (Autofocus, 2024) and the poetry collections What Shot Did You Ever Take (co-written with Brian Oliu); A Man Ain’t Nothin’; Two-Face God; Mother, Less Child (co-winner of the 2013 Paper Nautilus Vella Chapbook Prize); Dear Hero, (winner of the 2012 Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize and co-winner of the 2013 Etchings Press Whirling Prize); I Can Explain; and Silver. He and P.J. Williams are the editors of It Was Written: Poetry Inspired by Hip-Hop. He holds an MFA from the University of Miami. He is a native of Montgomery, Alabama, and he currently teaches at the University of North Alabama.

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Conversation topics include:

-- finding time

-- 20+ years of teaching

-- reading turning into writing

-- Nola Face: A Latina’s Life in the Big Easy

-- trying to quit writing

-- putting together an essay collection

-- time's role in craft

-- approaching the page in different stages of life

-- sports and new projects

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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, Mike Nagel interviews Andrew Bertaina.

Andrew Bertaina is the author of the essay collection The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place, out now from Autofocus Books, and the short story collection One Person Away From You (2021), which won the Moon City Short Fiction Award.

Mike Nagel is the author of Duplex and Culdesac (Autofocus Books, 2022 and 2024). He also wrote the music for this podcast and a column called The Unintentionalist for the literary magazine Little Engines.

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Full conversation topics include:

-- selves on the page

-- hyperfocusing

-- The Body Is A Temporary Gathering Place

-- reading as a pathway to writing

-- grading your own writing

-- essays vs. fiction

-- modes of essays

-- mind as setting

-- representing others in an essay

-- representing yourself in an essay

-- a good catalyst

-- what goes in and what goes out

-- speed

-- writing and not writing every day

-- getting and not getting stuck

-- valuing the reader

-- the essay "On Trains" specifically

-- gratitude

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

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

On today's episode ofThe Lives of Writers, Jeff Alessandrelli interviews Mallory Smart.

Mallory Smart is the author of the books I Keep My Visions to Myself, The Only Living Girl in Chicago, I Want to Feel Happy But I Only Feel _____, and The Writer. She's the editor-in-chief of Maudlin House and host of the podcast Textual Healing, where you can find a recent episode with the roles of this conversation reversed and hear Mallory interview Jeff.

Jeff Alessandrelli is the author of several books, including the poetry collection Fur Not Light. His novel And Yet was reissued this year by Future Tense Books. He is also the director and co-editor of the small presses Fonograf Editions and Bunny Presse.

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Full conversation topics include:

-- Chicagoland

-- growing up in Chicago

-- writing in high school

-- four siblings

-- history and philosophy

-- logic and therapy

-- writing a poetry collection

-- the preference for narrative

-- the story of Maudlin House

-- relationships with authority

-- writing a first novel

-- maladaptive daydreaming

-- an app that forces you to write

-- a novel in two weeks

-- fear of saying the wrong thing

-- pressure and nostalgia

-- editorial and publicity

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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.