Episode 35: Fiction/Non/Fiction
September 26th, 2019
Hosted by Brian Birnbaum
Guests: V.V. 'Sugi' Ganeshananthan & Whitney Terrell
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay
Podcast Assistant: Dylan Thomas
This week's episode of the Animal Riot Podcast invites V.V. 'Sugi' Ganeshananthan (author of the 2008 novel, Love Marriage) and Whitney Terrell (author of three novels, The Huntsman, The King of Kings County, and The Good Lieutenant). Both Sugi and Whit studied at the Iowa Writers' Workshop under the late James McPherson, who was the first black writer to win the Pulitzer for Fiction, a winner of the MacArthur grant (AKA the 'genius grant'), and a renowned activist and writer of issues surrounding race and culture. Having studied under McPherson at different times, Sugi and Whit didn't meet until the late and great writer's memorial service--yet as the Phoenix rises, so did the spirit of McPherson's values; after becoming fast friends, Sugi and Whit realized a shared vision for what has become the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast, which espouses literature and politics, and more specifically, how the former predicts and/or digs deeper into the latter.
>> Brian: Welcome to the 35th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press, a literary press for books that matter. I'm your host, Brian Birnbaum. I'm here today with the fiction/non/fiction podcast crew hosted by Whitney Terrell and V.V. Ganeshananthan. Fiction/non/fiction interprets current events through the lens of literature and features conversations with writers of all stripes, from novelists and poets to journalists and essayists. V.V., who's better known as Sugi, is the author of Among Much Else, the novel Love Marriage, which came out with Random House in 2008. And Whitney Terrell, better known as Whit, is the author of three novels, The Huntsman, The King of Kings County and The Good Lieutenant.
Okay, so on our rakish little podcast, we do what's called today's brand of fuckary and today's... I you know something that struck me, which is extremely picky. But you know, I'm just a little imp. I want to start with bringing up titles that start with article and adjective, The Good, which Whit you have with The Good Lieutenant, and it's become so in vogue and its provenance intrigues me to the point where I'm just like where is this coming from. And then we can talk about this when we bring up your work. Or now. It's up to you.
>> Whitney: What are some other books that are named that way?
>> Brian: There's The Good Doctor and The Good Place and, like, it's all over the place.
>> Whitney: Oh The Good Place, yeah. I will say that I did title that book back when I started writing it in 2006. It was at least before The Good Place.
>> Brian: Okay, so you're an OG of the article adjective thing going on here. Okay, I love it. Yeah, maybe we'll come back to that later, but I'm just apparently, yeah, it was...
>> Whitney: Maybe I started all of that.
>> Brian: Yeah, take credit for it.
>> Whitney: Although at least until 2016. So I don't know if I can really take credit for it.
>> Brian: Either take credit for it, or if it's some like, collective conscious mind meld and everything is one sort of thing, and we'll leave it at some Buddhist thing like that. Yeah, Okay, so let's start with how you do your podcast and what you're trying to do on your podcast, which is under the banner or sigil of Lithub. Which is really cool. I actually just published an essay there a few months ago. Something related to Catch 22. I really love their site. I love what they do over there.
>> Whitney: Oh I remember seeing that.
>> Brian: Yeah. Wow. Okay, well, here we are. We're full circle. Yes, so the tagline is pretty much you start your episodes talking about how pretty much everything on the news has been covered more or less within the realm of literature. So I guess a starting point for me is kind of like for the listeners unfamiliar with your podcast, is this a jumping off point for every episode? Or is it like a loose framework that guides or and, you know, in general, what are you guys trying to do?
>> Whitney: I'm leaving space for Sugi to go first.
>> Sugi: I was gonna say when Whitney's... our origin story is kind of a bit unusual. Whitney and I met at a memorial service for our former teacher, James McPherson, who we were both... we were students of Jim's at different times in our lives, but we have read a lot of the same things. And we, you know, after the memorial, went and had dinner with a few other writers and I think had a good conversation and realized we were both former journalists. And I think we both felt like we often we would be talking to her writer friends and looking at the headlines and, you know, thinking, Oh, this reminds me of that novel in which that situation is covered or oh, that reminds me of this craft problem that I'm having where I was thinking about point of view and how it relates to political power contexts.
And so it started out as sort of the jumping off point for every episode, and our first episode was about when we started in the fall of 2017. Is that right? And our first episode was about sort of took as its jumping off point Colin Kaepernick anthem protest.
>> Brian: Oh, yeah, yeah.
>> Sugi: And we had Britt Bennett and Matt Gallagher. Britt had written the mothers in which that's tied to the military and also to football. And Matt had been a veteran, and so we were able to sort of talk to them about how they thought the media was writing about this and also how they had written about it. And so, as the podcast has evolved, we have sometimes had episodes that are sort of quote/quote industry insider or emerging writer, or just sort of tips for things like submitting or you know, how to run a literary magazine. But those have been sort of unusual, and the sort of the politics and literature, the intersection of literature and the news has been, I think, really the flag that we're flying. And we're definitely a left leaning podcast, and I think we don't really hide that. But I think that we're also really interested in the nitty gritty of, you know, did that intersection of politics and art, which is so interesting, especially right now.
>> Brian: Yeah, yeah. Whit, do you want to add something to that?
>> Whitney: No, I mean, that's it. I just You know, when I was first thinking about doing a podcast. I just feel like first of all, writers aren't asked to talk about politics enough and all the writers that I am friends with talk politics all the time. Sort of off camera, you know? But they don't get asked it at readings very much, and they don't get asked specific political questions very often. And I thought that it would be cool... I like I'm a lot more interested to hear some poets and fiction writers talk about politics than I am to listen to... I don't know some CNN guy, right? And then there's also the depth of literature that all these things have been covered over time and I feel like literature has if you've read, you know, if you can look at the 19th century or 20th century literature and you're always finding stuff that are parallels today. But that information and that knowledge is available to a tiny segment of the population cause I don't think many people think that way about literature that it relates to today. But it does, and so you know, I find it like infinitely interesting every week, every other week to get to try to put together a show like that and think, What books are we gonna talk about? My favorite one is that we got to talk about we're talking about Facebook and the data breaches at Facebook. But we got to talk about Borges story... I always get the title of this wrong. Is that the Universal Library?
>> Sugi: The Library of Babel
>> Brian: Oh. Yeah, I've read that one. That's yeah, I love that story.
>> Whitney: Talking about that story as a way of thinking about data and the kind of data sets that Facebook has on everyone, and to me, that was like those with kind of discoveries that I find that the podcast can do when it's at its best.
>> Brian: Yeah, that's really interesting because, you know, the whole cliche past is prologue. You kind of like replace that with 'imagination is prologue' in a lot of ways and kind of like, you know, because like, that's really what were predicated on, you know, like the myths of ah, of society and laws and culture. And I think, yeah, you guys really hit on something there with how literature is.... Are you guys familiar with Yuval Noah Harari? Had we talked about this before off the air?
>> Whitney: No.
>> Brian: He wrote Sapiens. I bring him up all the time. There's people I bring up on this podcast all the time, and I think at some point they think I'm gonna stalk them or something. Yeah, he wrote sapiens. He wrote Homo Deus, and he wrote 21 Questions for the 21st century. And he starts off Sapiens talking about how what really differentiates humans from other species, it's not just intelligence, it's our ability to imagine and create fiction. And yes, so I think what you guys are doing is just incredibly important because whether it's fiction or nonfiction, you know, we have people that are not maybe not always predicting or speculating, but just seeing the possibilities that are out there. So, yeah, are there any specific episodes that come to mind for you guys that, um, I don't know, jump out at you. Because one thing I'm interested in is you Whit you just mentioned, how you want a lot more people to be talking about politics and the literary realm. But the first thing that comes to me is like That's scary. People like people can't even talk about politics at Thanksgiving, you know what I mean? And, you know, having people in my own family who have you No other political leanings like, How have you guys coped with that? And yeah, I guess so what mix of what episodes have jumped out at you and really like, dug into this theme of espousing politics and literature and how have you dealt with... you guys were left leaning, but that's not always your conversation I'm assuming? Where the person or the other conversing?
>> Whitney: Yeah, I know. The first thing we should say is that since people are listening to this... to find the podcast, there are slashes between the word. So if you want to type it into your search bar on your podcast, it's fiction/non/fiction.
>> Brian: Okay, cool.
>> Whitney: For the extra complication, we have to thank our awesome editor, Jonny Dymond.
>> Sugi: Also, it's not forward slash. It's just slash.
>> Whitney: Or whatever, whatever slash it is well.
>> Sugi: Just an observation.
>> Brian: Let's repeat that at the end so we make sure. And also, Johnny Diamond's the one who edited my essay at LitHub. That's crazy. That's also yeah, he's awesome.
>> Sugi: And I know what you just did to go back for a second. That this podcast idea was Whitney's idea. So I feel like it's important to say that, too, because, like, he sort of this is your child. This was his brainchild, and he was like, We met at this memorial service for our teacher. Would you like to do this with me? And it's been it has been really, really interesting to do it every weekend to kind of also to feel like I have now I don't know access to this other person's incredible brain where it's like I read twice as much as before, because now I can just ask what he thinks about things, which is great. So it's like having an additional colleague not on my campus.
>> Brian: Aw that's beautiful.
>> Sugi: I get ongoing conversation with and I feel like it sort of improves like my writing and my teaching. And it's also just wicked fun. So when you're talking about people who you know. It's called fiction/non/fiction, possibly because fiction slash non slash poetry slash non slash fiction I don't know. Maybe that was catchy to someone. But we've had a bunch of poets on it. And Juliana Spar, who was on and talked about eco politics, was I mean, she was. She was amazing. I mean, she's also been an activist and just kind of... she was not afraid to talk about politics at all and also to raise kind of really fundamental questions about, like, I think, some of the questions that many writers were asking themselves in the wake of kind of recent political events. What is the point of writing? And even to offer, you know, kind of lightning rod Controversial. I think you know, we don't like to think there's a point.
>> Brian: That's a big question.
>> Sugi: And so, you know, that was an episode where I was like, All right, Juliana is gonna go. And, you know, I do think we're quite left leading. I at least am so left leading, I might as well fall over in that direction. So I do think like many of our guests come on probably knowing that, and that doesn't mean that there isn't some nuance in there. I think we're able as a result, actually, to have conversations about nuances of left politics, and we also offer, I think about the same spirit, a lot of critique of left politics. We are often critical of the Democratic Party or whatever. So I think we've been fortunate to have a lot of guests who are not afraid to talk politics.
>> Whitney: We got to talk about the whole entire Democratic nominee field with George and Paula Saunders at a book festival that recorded live.
>> Brian: Wow, Wow.
>> Whitney: We did one recently that I liked. We did want about Native American writers that I think was really interesting with Brandon Hobson.
>> Sugi: And Rhiana Yazzie, who is the first playwright to be on the podcast, and she runs The New Native Theater here in Minneapolis. That was really cool and yeah, it was awesome to have Brandon on as well.
>> Brian: Have you guys ever had someone on...
>> Whitney: Who is kind of you have conservative? We have not. The asshole uncle has not been invited. That wouldn't work.
>> Brian: Yeah, well, I can tell you I have I want to feel like I'm a professor emeritus of Discourse with that side because I have close family members who have voted the other way. And so I'm very interested in in kind of like, how we do integrate that into literature because, you know, what is the point of writing is a really big question. Does it ever cross into your podcast about how to reach across the aisle?
>> Whitney: That's interesting. I mean, I don't I don't know. See, What do you think?
>> Sugi: I don't know that I am. I'm probably related to some people who didn't vote, period, but I don't know that I'm related to anyone who voted for Trump.
>> Brian: You're lucky.
>> Sugi: I think I am, actually, but I mean, I do wonder, right? I think the questions of who is the audience? Those come up all the time and in all sorts of context. Like there's reaching across the aisle. There's reaching across across national boundaries. There's reaching across racial boundaries. Gender boundaries. So, you know, we've talked to people about what they think is appropriation and why and how to avoid that. We have had a couple of writers on whom have been sort of, you know, journalists who maybe are not going... Yeah, who are not gonna identify their politics. Or people who you know have participated in, I don't know, sections of civil society sections of American society that tend to be more conservative like we've had... We did the episode on the military during the time of Trump, and I think that sort of that was a conversation where...
>> Whitney: Elliott is probably more conservative than you or I are. Elliot Ackerman who was our guest. The Good Lieutenant is a war novel. I'm a very anti war writer, in particular the Iraq war, and I think that he's less critical of that war than I would be.
>> Whitney: And so I mean, I guess I don't know enough about I mean, Mac Gallagher when he was on that first episode. Like he provided really interesting history of the way that the anthem became popular football games, which was stuff I didn't know in which did that sort of that history gave me, like a more critical view.
>> Whitney: Sorry, he said that... we're asking a veteran, What do you think about people who are saying that this is offensive to veterans? You know, too offensive to the military, to kneel at the football games. And so I mean, I think that I think that I might not have had Matt on if I thought that he had a completely idiotic take on it. But I thought his take was smart and I knew him, and so I thought, OK, it'll be good to have that conversation with him.
>> Sugi: And I think that was like a good first lesson for me to sort of think, you know, I didn't know Matt, and I'm glad to now be in touch with him, but also to sort of not assume when people's viewpoints are was really was kind of a good way to start, actually.
>> Brian: Yeah, and that's kind of like the lesson that I've learned not only spiritually but yeah in the political sphere. Starting from a place of non assumption is very difficult, especially when you have such a strong impulse. It's just a visceral reaction to someone like Trump. At least personally, a lot of this is actually making me very excited to be on your podcast, because I have so much to say about this. But yeah, yeah, let's keep the focus on you guys. And I want to bring up how you guys met because you guys mentioned James Allen McPherson, who you guys refer to as Jim McPherson. Which kind of betrays the relationship you guys had with him. I don't know, in my opinion, maybe he's noticed as good old Jim. You know, he was known as good old Jim around, um, around everyone. But, um but yeah, I mean, just just reading about him, even briefly, like, I'm not that familiar with him, but he seems like a very impressive individual. I also have to mention that his birthday is between Katie and and my birthdays. So I have a Virgo sort of affinity. The special place in my heart for him right now.
>> Sugi: His birthday just passed, actually,
>> Brian: Yeah.
>> Sugi: So in that case, happy birthday.
>> Brian: Thank you. Katie, they say happy birthday. Katie says thanks. I should say our producers, That's how I refer to Katie because she's the most dynamo multitasker I've ever met in my life. So Yeah, So you guys met at his memorial, but you both had a relationship with him prior to that. That's what I'm kind of gleaning.
>> Sugi: Yeah, he was, You know, we were both students in his class, is. And what did you have him for a workshop? I had him for workshop, and that was my main experience with him. How about you?
>> Whitney: Yeah, we should say he taught at the University of Iowa at the Iowa Writers Workshop for many years, and that was where we had him a students and I had him for he had these great seminars that I also took that would involve a lot of sort of his core ideas about race in America and thoughts. Stuff that I refer to still all the time. So, yeah, I had them both for a workshop, and I thought his seminars were actually better than his workshops. Just to be honest.
>> Sugi: I'm not sure if he was still teaching seminars when I was there.
>> Brian: I Well, what were what were these? Uh, can you Can you give kind of the differences? Obviously, workshop is you guys are handing something out, and then we're going over it. We all know what that is. Kind of. You know, we're for those of you listening that have not been doing MFA or a workshop. You basically handed in a piece of work to your classmates and the professor, and then you come back and take heat from it. In the worst case scenario, I guess. But yes. So the seminars. What went down in those? Why? Why were those so special?
>> Whitney: Well, I first of all, you know, I end, I write a lot about race in American life and one of the things that I'm white and and I had never thought about doing that at all until I was in Jim's classes. And but, you know, he asked his students to call him Jim. And I always feel a little nervous, Like people are gonna assume that, you know, it's a diminutive or something like that. But it really was how we said hi to him.
>> Brian: Yeah, especially to someone who won the MacArthur, which is pretty much like the genius grant, right? That's like, That's pretty intimidating.
>> Whitney: I never called him James. Did you?
>> Sugi: No
>> Brian: Yeah, it would just feel strange to me.
>> Sugi: I think I called him sir the first time. It was like, No.
>> Brian: It's like, What do you call someone that you've kind of like idolized for a long time? I've had that experience. It's very strange.
>> Whitney: So you know, I So he first of all, one thing that I thought was really important that he did was encourage American writers to write about this subject and give them some context to write about it. So, you know, I think he gave interesting lectures on the sort of philosophical differences between Ralph Ellison and Richard Wright and how their relationship went and how and how different they were in thinking about, like how race affected an individual in American life, that that that right was much more determinative and that Bigger Thomas, for instance, was predetermined to become the character that he was because of his station in life because of his color because he lived in a white supremacist state. Whereas Ellison was more optimistic about the possibility of the individual to transcend circumstance and that shows an Invisible Man and in Ellison's essays he was a student of Ellison. He was. He was on Ellison side of that argument, I think, but he was good at talking about both sides. I mean, I was there during the Rodney King era, so he talked a ton about that. He talked about I'll be on Tour Gay and an important sort of lawyer who had been involved in the Plessy vs Ferguson case. He taught me an essay by Ralph Ellison called A Black Mask of Humanity that's come up several times in the podcast that is Ellison talking about how it affected American literature for white American writers to stop writing about race in the beginning of the 20th century. Stuff like that that's really that you just don't hear anywhere else And that he had spent a lifetime thinking about.
>> Brian: Yeah. Yeah. What about you, Sugi? What was What was your experience with him?
>> Sugi: Well, I think you're right to say that there's a lot about workshop, and that makes me really sad that I was never in any seminars. But I think that some of the same stuff came into the workshop because he would give us he would give us readings and some of the things that he was, you know, he was famous for you would sometimes play a little bit of Richard Pryor in class. Like a comedy album and was it him interviewing Richard? Did he do this with you?
>> Whitney: What?
>> Sugi: The Richard Pryor thing?
>> Whitney: I don't remember that. Tell me the story.
>> Sugi: I think it was him interviewing Richard Pryor.
>> Whitney: Oh, no, I don't know about that.
>> Sugi: And I think if, like, actually I mean, now I want to google it right now which offers is doing, but yeah, I mean, he was He would bring in things to workshop that other people might not have brought in. And so you would sort of realize, you know, workshop is people sometimes think of workshop is this very square rigid format. And it actually isn't the idea that your teacher might write you a letter or maybe not. And but that isn't... what you get out of workshop has so much to do with each individual instructor. So he talked to us about, you know, writing about our communities. And he would always say to me that I was fortunate to have a rich community out of which to consider what I was writing. And he just sort of endlessly, unfailingly supported me.
>> Brian: Was he referring to the Sri Lankan community or a smaller community? Or what was he referring to?
>> Sugi: He was referring to like this Hamilton lock in diaspora and sort of like my work in that which I had already kind of big on to doh and I think there were people including classmates of mine there who really wanted to frame my work as small minded in some way because that was what I was doing. And Jim was sort of like, no What you're doing is big, and he encouraged everyone really also to write about big ideas. Like I think you know, there's a lot of oh, you know, I like to write about ordinary life and the beauty of ordinary life and Jim was into that. But he would also say, If you want to write a story about freedom, you should go do that and that's also your material that's also your your terrain, and you shouldn't be afraid to to do it. That was a beautiful thing and he would just sort of. And I have been told before I came that actually, by Suketu Mehta, who has a new book of nonfiction out and who had also been very kind to me. When I was an emerging writer, he was sort of like go to Iowa, and find Jim..
>> Brian: Sans an acceptance letter? (laughter)
>> Sugi: I think it was post acceptance. Suketu came through and was like here's the South Asian grocery store. Try to sign him for as many Jim McPherson's classes as you can. So Jim supported a lot of writers in this very openhearted way.
>> Whitney: And I could have shown up in his class and not been in the program and he wouldn't have given a shit.
>> Sugi: People did that right? You know, he was also not a gatekeeper of the way that some other people, like in sort of teaching an elite programs, etcetera. It might be like, you know, do you have your spot here? I am a poet in my workshop, actually, because there was a poet in my program, Shira Dunce, who is a published poet now and a wonderful writer. And she wanted to take a fiction workshop, which was usually, I think, not permitted, not the thing. And Jim was sort of like, Oh, of course, if she's interested, that's great. So she'll be in class with us. And that just sort of changed the whole tenor of the conversation that we weren't out to kind of police each other out of things. And I think that especially given the kind of genre siloing that go on in a lot of places like he was really ahead of his time in so many ways.
>> Brian: Yeah, well, honey, we actually had Ah, our good friend Devin, who cofounded Animal Riot with Katie was one of the first, if not the first person at Sarah Lawrence to do both poetry and fiction. So, yeah, that's really interesting to me, but also it would be interesting to see someone tried to audit a class of, like, how many people were in these workshops, like seven?
>> Sugi: Exactly. I mean, I think it was must have been 10 or under, and I mean it also, just like he was such an audacious writer. When I was I was guest faculty at Iowa a couple of years ago, and I gave my students one of the stories from his collection Elbow Room, and one of the writers just came and she was like, Can we do that? And I was like you can do that.
>> Brian: Yeah, that and that's the mark of something really great. Every writer that you know, especially in my young twenties, when I was first coming across some of my favorite writers. That was just like, Man, can you You can do this? That's exactly the feeling. But Whit? It sounded like you were about to say something.
>> Whitney: I just remember that he was also it's important, I think, to remember that he was very funny. And he was funny about race and topics that would normally be taboo or difficult for students to talk about. I remember he had this... He had made up these cards that he would give out to people that called him like Biff McPherson, Public intellectual.
>> Brian: That's hilarious.
>> Whitney: It said like you. You sit, I bullshit. That was his tag line.
>> Brian: Is that Is that it? Back to the Future reference?
>> Whitney: No, it was just funny.
>> Whitney: Okay.
>> Sugi: Like it was sort of like, you know why I love country music. Like a name that he thought no one would associate with him.
>> Brian: Okay. Okay. Cool.
>> Whitney: He had an eclectic imagination. I mean, eclectic taste. He loved John Ford Westerns and thought they were really key to understanding, like the American psyche, whether you were white or black or whatever your race was. And he was really interested in Japanese culture. He loved railroads. He just knew as soon as Sugi was saying how to connect with your work and he would find a thing that he was interested in that was intersecting with what you were doing. I was writing about Alaska where I had been working on fishing boats, and he started talking about James Fenimore Cooper. And I was like, what the fuck? But he loved James Fenimore Cooper. So we talked about that, you know?
>> Brian: Yeah. Yeah. He sounds like he had a very generous imagination. Our thesis advisor, David Hollander, whose book we're publishing Second, actually. Same deal. It's like, you know, he writes the most. He writes the darkest, like, borderline nihilistic fiction that that you like, You know, I mean, like, I'm talking like like a maximalist version of, like, the Elementary Particles kind of shit. And like, and yet when you bring your stuff into him. It could be the most Polyana shit that you can imagine. And he's right there with you, You know what I mean? So that that spirit of just like curiosity and a desire to kind of just guide you towards what your vision is is like that... That's the mark of a great teacher. So, yeah, I really I really wish I got to meet James and to be able to call him Jim. He sounds like a really great guy. And I'm definitely I'm definitely gonna have to start reading a lot of his work. But yes. Speaking of teaching, I'd like to if you guys are all right with it, I'd like to move on to how, um, you're you're both teachers, and you you're both out in the Midwest, correct?
>> Whitney: Yeah.
>> Sugi: Yes.
>> Brian: So that that's interesting to me. Especially considering the sort of political literary like espousal of your podcasts and and and just in general, you know, what is it like with your students? I mean, I can imagine in the in the educational institution, it is itself liberal leaning, especially with the younger crowd. But I also don't know are... Are you guys teaching creative writing on both an undergraduate and graduate level or, you know, I guess you know, that sounds like a motley of questions jammed into one. But, uh, I'm just curious. Like how all this works together with what your vision is for your podcast and how it translates to teaching.
>> Whitney: Oh, you want me to go? All right. Well, first of all, we have two interns from my MFA program at the University of Missouri in Kansas City where I teach so and I do teach on the graduate level. And then we also have an undergraduate creative writing program that I that I teach in a swell, as do all of my colleagues here. So we've integrated directly into the curriculum in the sense that the students in turn and help work with us on the podcast. And I'm actually going to teach a class on podcasting next spring. Sugi don't know if you knew that you and I talked about this, but they just put it on the schedule for me so that you could be a guest lecturer.
>> Brian: This is the inaugural class? You're kind of like the start up for this?
>> Whitney: I have no fucking clue. I have no idea. I mean, I just taught myself how to do this to me, and I just sort of done it, I assume, without taking any classes, as I assume you did, you know, But you can go back and sort of retrace your steps, I guess, and try to figure out how you know you learn how to do one. Learn how to do what one is doing.
>> Brian: Yeah, I Oh, I actually learned from Katie, which actually is a euphemism for Katie figuring everything out and then me just getting on this mic and being me (laughs).
>> Sugi: That sounds like a good setup.
>> Brian: Yeah, it's mildly exploitative.
>> Whitney: I do the sound editing and but we have all that's a whole different thing. Like how we divide up the work on the podcast. But for teaching. Yeah, The other thing that I notice is that as Sugi was saying, like she feels I have met a lot of writers that she's friends with that I didn't know she is younger than I am. And so we know sort of slightly different generation of writers. And so that has expanded the people that I asked to read. It's helped me think about how to talk to my students in certain ways because I feel like we have younger writers on the show, and I think that helps. I think it helps to have my students listen to the podcast. At least them know what we're talking about because it's a way for Midwestern students don't have access. They don’t go to literary parties.
>> Brian: Yeah, that's the first thing I was thinking about. It's like you get when it when I say you guys are teaching in the Midwest, I'm not just thinking about like red states or anything. I'm thinking like we've done podcast episodes about people being removed from New York or even like LA or something like that, you know? And it must feel kind of disconnecting in a way, and whether that feeling is actual fact, you know? Yeah, I'm curious about how you've approached that.
>> Whitney: I want them to see like, Hey, you can reach out and talk to writers. Here's Terry Jones on our show talking about her books, you know, like you have through the faculty here, you can get access as a Midwestern writer to whatever level of access you wanna have in the literary world. It's not impossible for you to be a part of it. Here's this podcast that happens. Technology is helping. Twitter helps you follow people who are in New York. It's the distance between New York and Kansas City, where I live is much less than it was when I was growing up. And you can learn about the literary world without having to be necessarily in New York, and I just feel like that's helpful. I don't know if that is true for you, Sugi.
>> Sugi: Well, I think Minneapolis has a bunch of publishers, you know, Grey Wolf, Coffeehouse, Milkweed.
>> Brian: I love Coffeehouse.
>> Sugi: Yeah, I mean, so you can actually go to literary parties here. But it's a set of publishers who are, you know, they're not the big five. They are publishers who have, you know who are running on different models. But I think our students were really interested in learning about that. And bringing that into the conversation on the podcast has been fun to kind of for me to learn more about them and also for those publishers, anything to get attention for the good work that they're doing. And rather than this sort of like, I think, the New York World, you know, I lived in New York. It was fun. It was interesting. It was educational. And this is, Yeah, this is a different realm, but one that has no those publishers are publishing great work. Sometimes they're publishing the work of our graduates, and I do also teach on the MFA and undergraduate level. So yeah, and I think that one of the things I very quickly realised was that the podcast enabled me to think through my answers to questions my students sometimes had. I think people associate the Midwest with whiteness, and I think that that's not always accurate. But certainly I know a lot of white writers here who are interested in kind of critiques of whiteness. And so that was the thing that was on my mind when we did our 2nd episode on Whiteness, for example. But then I think also to kind of constantly remind people that there are people of color in the Midwest and one of them hostess podcast every other week. I live in the Midwest and continue inexplicably to be a person like, you know, it's like, Are you okay? I'm like, yeah, you know, I'm I'm managing in this state with, like, really good arts funding. And like I teach in unfunded MFA program in an urban area and for people to just know that that exists, I feel like does a little bit of work. So, yeah, I do feel like and I've heard that the podcast is used in a lot of classrooms, which is not a thing that occurred to me at all is an outcome when we started doing it, I think it's used a fair amount as a teaching tool, which is really cool. So I hope that it's helping to raise new questions and help people to think through their ideas about how they want to write right now.
>> Brian: Yeah, and that I kind of want to piggy back to the idea of how Whit said there was kind of an age gap between you guys and this is the last thing I'll bring up before ah before bringing your own work. I'm really curious as if there is a generational difference between you guys. Like have you compared notes to see... and this is kind of loose question, because what is progress? But have you seen progress within over the years between when wits first started teaching and now, like kind of comparing notes and saying, OK, what are these kids reading? What do you know, or grad students like the adults and how do they view literature and kind of just diversity and even integrating maybe even like something like conservatism into literature or something like that? I don't know any any thoughts on that. Is there a difference between when Whit started now when you guys were comparing notes?
>> Whitney: I don't know. When did you start teaching Sugi?
>> Sugi: I started Teaching is a graduate student in 2003 but I started teaching at the MFA level into follow 2009. So I've been teaching in the MFA level for about a decade.
>> Whitney: I think teaching time is not really all that different, cause I mean, I started teaching at UMKC in 2004 I said, grad student, I graduated in, like, 94 from Iowa. And I taught there for a year. But before that, I was just an adjunct or a laborer, you know?
>> Brian: Yeah. Yeah. I was what I was six when that happened. (laughs)
>> Sugi: We do have these episodes where the generation gap, like we did an episode on what was it like to read books in the 1997? And then Whit was like, Let's start the episode with what we were both doing in 1997 and I was like, I was applying to college and thinking about the prom. And he was like, You were a child.
>> Brian: Yeah, and in my mind when I asked that question like, I guess, like to bring in something tangible out of the blue. It's like I'm thinking about, I read White Teeth when I was, you know, in, like, 2013 or something, right? But I'm sitting here wondering, like what was the effect of that when that came out? You know, like I must. And that was around. That was a little before 9/11. And so especially. And it was still probably on people's minds when 9 11 happened and obviously has a lot to do with with, like, the Eastern influence in England. And like I'm just thinking is there is there some sort of impact that you see that that book had at that time that translates to now like, is that conversation stronger? Or it was, or was that book so big at like, was that conversation around that book even bigger than what's going on now? Because as a singular entity, you know?
>> Whitney: I think conversation's wax and wane. I think that, you know, White Teeth was was incredibly popular. It was also a book in which you know she's writing across racial lines, which is now a much more controversial thing to do, oddly enough, right at the time that it came out, I mean. The Huntsman came out in 2000 and one so and I have a black character in that name, Booker Short, And there's several black characters in that book, and that was really it was not a major issue at the time that it would be, I would think today. So, oddly enough that those things kind of change. I think Zadie Smith is now seen as... Sugi, correct me if you think I'm wrong about this, but I think people view her as being kind of more in the in sort of mainstream or even slightly conservative, in the way that she thinks about being able to write across. She's definitely someone who says, like, Okay, you should be writing across racial lines. That is fine. She's written essays that were in defense of that painting that got in a ton of trouble in the Whitney Biennale. Do you remember this? You know what you're talking about. I think she wrote a defense of the Emmett Till painting by a white painter that was part of that conversation, and she came in on the sort of, like, back off the criticism side, which was, and she got a lot of flak for that I thought. Anyway, I think she's an interesting... but I don't think you would have expected her to be in that particular position when that book was first coming out. Because the world of writing is still as we talked about in the pockets many times. Publishing is still very, very, very white. But it was even more when White Teeth was coming out.
>> Brian: Right, right, right.
>> Sugi: So that is a difference. I don't know that I would talk about her as more conservative rather than I mean, I don't know. Of course I'm biased in this regard, but I see that view is actually more progressive, and it...
>> Whitney: Ok, Well, I do too.
>> Brian: You know what? I'm gonna chime in. And I'm saying really glad you guys said that because I totally agree. And and, you know, this is something that I would love to get into it on your guy's podcast sometime, You know, because I think it's a little more geared towards your podcast. But I totally agree, I think. But I also believe that there is a very distinct reason for the place that we're at now, you know, you know, and and and you know it's just growing pains, you know what I mean? It's like I have black characters in my novel that just came out, but none of them are are from there, none of those characters come from my narrative point of view, You know what I mean? And and I don't know if that was appointed decision, you know? But subconsciously, I think maybe it was because I didn't think I deserved it. And I don't know if that's a generational thing. You know, like you said, like, you know, maybe if it was the year 2000 maybe I would have been completely fine with it. But already in my next book, I'm thinking about there's a black woman that I would like to write from her perspective. But I don't know if I'm allowed to at this point, you know? But yeah, that's going into a lot of that. So that's going to a bigger conversation. So yeah, I want to bring in your eyes own work. And yeah, uh, you know, we could we could talk about it a little bit. I'd also be really pleased if you guys would want to read. I don't know if we prepared you for that.
>> Sugi: Yeah, we can read.
>> Brian: That would be awesome. Yeah, you guys can give all your you know, all the context you want. You know, all that's all that good stuff.
>> Whitney: I'd be happy to do it. I'm just going to say real quick. I just Googled it. Dana Shutz was the artist who did that painting that Zadie Smith wrote about for Harpers.
>> Brian: Interesting. I have to check that essay out. I wasn't aware of that. That's really interesting.
>> Whitney: I think Smith's take on it felt very McPhersonesque to me.
>> Brian: Ah, okay.
>> Whitney: I liked it. I thought that it was good.
>> Sugi: I do think also that she started a lot of conversations. I think that, you know, I think of her that there was this moment where young women of color were writing sort of these informs that people said that you, you know, you couldn't do or with voices that were more powerful than people expected. And they sort of set a standard for how the publishing industry could treat people like that and I think paved the way for a lot of people in that regard. I mean, I remember loving that book so much, and it had all of those different covers. I don't know if you remember, like, the different colors, and I borrowed it from someone and I loved it so much. I did something that I've never done with any other book, which is that I didn't return it, and then I (laughter) and I sent her a new copy. You know, like, a couple of years later, I was like, I'm so sorry. It was totally evil to steal this book from you, but just I was so delighted. But, I mean, she was also someone who was right... There was something very London about that book, and she was from she had gone to, I think Cambridge and have this kind of elite background, which was also very young.
>> Brian: Yeah, very young.
>> Sugi: She was this like blazing Prodigy star. Now she's become like, you know, some prodigies don't stick. And she clearly wasn't just a prodigy. Now she's just a titan. And to see, like, a young woman of color, like set that kind of example was really kind of amazing.
>> Brian: Yeah, I'm sure it was very profound at the time. Especially especially an English writer of color. Like, you know, I think that was that must've been really interesting, but yeah, again, I only got to read it in 2013 so I was kind of into the Twitter age already.
>> Sugi: Whit has a couple of times on our podcast made the point that, you know, so many American writers are now writing about cities. And then if you're writing about a city, you're writing about a polyphonic experience and with every time you make that point, White Teeth is actually the book that I think of because it seems like such a good example of what you're saying. How could you write about It's like it's like, why I hate. And this is somewhat unfair of me because I've never seen it and have zero intention of doing so. Like, I'm never gonna watch Girls because it's like a depiction of a New York that has almost no people of color.
>> Brian: You should never watch it, because I'm gonna tell you right now. I've seen all of it, and I've never loved and hated a show so much at the same time.
>> Sugi: I'm sure it has other redeeming qualities. I just don't care
>> Brian: Yeah, it's HBO. So it's done very well, but, like, yeah, it's like, Yes, there it is. It's everything you just said and I just hated it. Like every character is just so hateable. I'll just leave it at that. But yeah, Okay. Is there anything else you guys want to add before you move onto your own stuff or? No. Yeah. Okay. Let's do it.
>> Sugi: Because you're reading from your new book. So it seems like that might be the juicier one. Do you want to go first or do you want to go first?
>> Whitney: I don't think you should be describing anyone is more juicy than anyone else. Whatever order you want to go, and it's fine with me. (laughter)
>> Brian: There's no vampires in the room. (laughter)
>> Sugi: Okay. I will have to come up with another adjective than juicier. I am very much looking forward to hearing Whitney read from his new book that he's been working on. I'm also working on a book, but I am not reading from it. I'm reading from a story that I have in the new issue of Copper Nickel, which is edited by Wayne Miller. And and it's out of Denver and the story, I started writing it for a conference in Edinburgh years ago. A friend of mine is an anthropologist asked me to read there, and I didn't want to read from the novel I was working on, so I thought I would start a new story. And then I started the story, but I didn't finish it in time for the reading. So I did something very weird where I just kind of read to an audience of mostly social scientists who do fieldwork in Sri Lanka, and then they were kind enough to want to know what happened. So I finished the story, and it's called The Missing Are Considered Dead. And it's in, yeah, the follow through of Copper Nickel. And it takes its title from something that the prime minister of Sri Lanka said in a speech in Sri Lanka a few years ago, which which I thought was super offensive, he said, The missing or considered dead. So the story is from the point of view of woman whose husband is missing, and they're sort of certain bureaucratic issues around after your family member is missing for a certain period of time, there, declared that, and then you can receive compensation for their loss. And so, in this story, this woman is kind of the clock is ticking, so I will read from the middle of the story and industry for a couple of minutes.
==============
Be sure to checkout "The Missing Are Considered Dead" by V.V. (Sugi) Ganeshananthan in the Fall issue of Copper Nickel
During the first year, I went to talk to Thushara and the colonel once a week, to ask
them what they had heard, if there was any news of Ranjan. I began in earnest. You
know me, I said helplessly; you see me every day and you know me. I just want him
back; if the army took him I won’t tell anyone, I don’t have to tell anyone, but he is not
with the Tigers. He is just Krishan’s father, and please, please, won’t you tell me where
he is? The colonel, who I think was not a bad man, and who was even farther from
his village than Thushara was from his, stared at me and was silent. In the second year,
when I had more work for less money than I could have dreamed possible, I went
only once a month, even though every morning I woke up thinking Ranjan was next
to me. Every once in a while Sarojini would wander across the road and tell me that
she had heard a rumour about where he was being held. Your husband. I would have
talked to her for any length of time to hear that phrase. But after some time even she
stopped coming; perhaps my loneliness embarrassed her. Other neighbors who had
visited me when my husband was home ignored me, averting their eyes when they
saw me on the street. And then, at last, in the third year, my exchanges with the colonel
became a formality. I asked him if there had been any progress, and showed him
copies of letters I had written to various authorities, but when he nodded absently, I
understood that there might never be any news. The only people who smiled at me,
who could stand to smile at me, were Thushara and his friends, their faces bright with
sweat as they poured concrete for the new military hotel, which rose like a growing
child behind the barrier wire, in the place where some of our homes had been.
Every month on the seventh day I looked at the calendar and ticked the months
down. I have told you that I was poor. By the end of the first year Krishan had no
shoes; by the end of the second, his clothes no longer fit him; by the last days of the
third year, my boy resembled Ranjan at the worst moments of his life, at least his
life as I had seen it, when his time with the Tigers had worn him thin and impatient.
Krishan was still my sweet Ranjan-faced baby, still quiet, but every day he seemed to
get smaller instead of bigger. He was only four.
Around that time, the new headmaster who had come to the school began asking
me to stay late. He was also friends with the soldiers and knew how I had come
to work there. You understand what I’m saying—he had his own things he needed
cleaned and done and taken care of. Mending, sewing, filing, odd tasks—chores that
other people wouldn’t have been willing to do. What he wanted was a young and efficient
woman who wouldn’t complain, who wouldn’t say anything, who needed the
money. During the day Krishan went to a nursery run by the nuns, but in the evenings
they had their own services and did not take care of children. I had no one to watch
my child then, perhaps because the only people who visited my house now were the
soldiers, checking on me. Could I take Krishan with me? He was unobtrusive; surely
the headmaster wouldn’t mind, and if he needed me to come somewhere that Krishan
couldn’t follow, my baby could wait quietly. He knew how to do that.
I had just decided to bring Krishan along when Thushara stopped by for a cup
of tea, as he sometimes did. I could never refuse him, either. He, too, was starting to
look older—his neck thicker, like a man’s neck, his arms and shoulders filled out by
the hard construction work the army did. I gave him a cup of tea and the last biscuits
I had, and told him that I would have to leave soon to go back to work. He had just
come to see my son, he said, gazing at Krishan, who was playing with the dog that
lived on our lane. You’re going to work again? Thushara asked, confused. It’s evening
time, isn’t it? I’ll watch him.
I looked at Thushara, who even being a soldier was still a boy, and at my son,
who would never be a Tiger like Ranjan, and I didn’t wish that either of those facts
were different. I left Krishan with Thushara, who, unlike some of the other soldiers
I had met, thought he was my friend, and walked to work, where the headmaster was
waiting for me in his office.
==============
>> Brian: Wow. That's a lot. That was really great. Thank you Sugi.
>> Whitney: Yeah, that was good. I haven't read that story. So it's in the current Copper Nickel?
>> Sugi: Yeah, it's in the Fall of Copper Nickel. I spent a lot of time sort of studying the effects of the war on women and children and surreal because North and East, where there were about 90,000 war widows at the end of the war. And it's a militarized area, and I think it's easy to kind of damn the military where actually, a lot of the soldiers were kind of economics conscripts who are quite far from home, but then also sort of inevitably, the power balance between those sense of people is, I think, a challenge to live through on a daily basis.
>> Brian: That's something that Nabokov said that I think I'll always think about Is that, like the writer's job is to chase the main character up a tree and then once they're there, throw rocks at them. But to do that like compassionately is like, you know... Nabokov didn't always do you know he was often satirical, so, like, you know, like that. That's a very, very Nabokov quote, but at the same time, like it's like, Yeah, it's You did that. But you did it with a tenderness that's very, very hard to manage. And yeah, I mean, that's Yeah, I'm I'm very excited to finish the rest of that story. Where can we find it? Only in print or online as well?
>> Sugi: Eventually, it might end up online at the moment. I think it's only in print, Okay, but I think most of the Copper Nickel stuff ends up online eventually. But, yeah, it's a great journal. If people want us to describe and supported all thrown a plug, I really love them. And I think they make a beautiful magazine.
>> Brian: Okay. Yeah. Great. The Copper Nickel, everyone. Thank you so much. That was great.
>> Whitney: I subscribe to it. Sugi didn't tell me that she had a story in it, though, so it's in my like to read pile.
>> Brian: There you go. Okay. What are you gonna read from?
>> Whitney: Yeah, this is from ah, book that I think that I'm done with. Although I've got to send it to my agent to find out for sure. It's called The Crossroads. It's mostly set in, sort of like Kansas City's version of Williamsburg, which is not a thing that Kansas City had, except over the last 10 years or so. It's a neighborhood. The Crossroads is sort of art neighborhood that, like is it began as galleries that began with a bunch of white artists moving into a mostly Latinx neighborhood and sort of co existing there pretty peacefully. But then you know this sort of normal gentrification story begins to happen. The complication of that gentrification story in this book is that the two characters who I'm gonna read about Terrance Lott and Kelvin Watson, who move in our African American and so there nobody knows really quite what to do with them. They're up upwardly mobile, sort of recently well off professionals. Terrance is a writer, and Kelvin's involved in politics, and I wanted to write a book that was like, sort of upended the way that I'd written about race in Kansas City before, because the two previous books had written were about the white power structures of the city and how they operated and how they controlled things. But in the last 10 years and during the period of time that this novel set, the mayor, the chief of police, the chancellor of the University of the major University, my university, and the representative for the Congress from this district were all African American men. And so I wanted to write about that some. So anyway, I think that's basically what you need to know, that the Terrance and Kelvin are our African American and that they're the first African American residents moving into this neighborhood is part of that part what the scene's about.
>> Brian: Okay.
===============
A section of “The Crossroads” by Whitney Terrell
The Crossroads neighborhood group didn’t invite Terrance Lawton and Kelvin Watson to
their discussion of the Adelphi Projects’ condominium. The couple was new to the area and
some believed that only “long-term stakeholders” should participate, while others wanted to
protect the new couple from “divisiveness.” Regardless of their reasons, everyone paused guiltily when the door of Wilfred Gomez’s Los Alamos Grocery and Lunch dinged and the Lawton-Watson family entered: Terrance in a natty V-necked sweater and a checked shirt and Kelvin, taller, more angular and muscular, with a chiseled goatee poking out over an Illinois University polo, extending his angular chin into a C.
“Welcome to the unofficial spring meeting of the Crossroads neighborhood group,” said
Sam Bonifacio. Dressed in his usual high water khakis and Tevas with white socks, Sam
presided from the far end of the faux wood-paneled restaurant. “Now, to go over our agenda, we
have listed here ‘recycling bin placement,’ we have birthdays for this month—”
“It’s my birthday!” a voice said from the back.
The Lawton-Watson kid, KJ, scrambled forward, waving his Grover-like arms above his
head. The residents, in metal chairs at long white Formica tables, made a sound that equated to: Aww, that’s so sweet. Then Martha Tillman stood up blinking and implacable. “Don’t try and
distract us with birthdays and recycling, Sam,” she said in a flat, firm voice. “This condo is going
to ruin the architectural balance of the neighborhood. It’s an eyesore. I’m speaking for a lot of
people when I say that one of the reasons we moved to the Crossroads was that people respected the original, historic architecture here.”
“Are you?” Sam asked. He blinked out at the room of people as if going blind.
“Am I what?” Martha asked.
“Speaking for a lot of people?” Sam said. “Because lots of people in this neighborhood
are going to benefit from this.”
“Then how come they oppose it?”
“Because people don’t always know what benefits them!” Sam shouted, rising on the
balls of his Tevas. “They aren’t educated on what their self-interest really is!!”
Comments like this were exactly what people had hoped to keep from the Lawton-
Watsons’ ears. “Come on, guys, let’s get along,” Kerri Sullivan said, uncrossing her Uggs. “We
don’t normally act this way. Especially you, Sam—as a person of privilege, you know better than
to tell less fortunate people what’s in their best interest.”
“Privilege?” Sam bared his teeth and spoke the word as if he might bite it in half. “Well
Kerri, since you and Martha own two of the most expensive homes in the Crossroads, who are
we discussing? By ‘less fortunate’ do you just mean Mexicans—”
“People of color, Sam,” someone said.
“Maybe you should ask Diana Bonta whether or not she gives a damn about architectural
balance. She didn’t inherit money like you, Martha. She’d like property values to go up—which
will happen when this condo goes in—so her mother can buy a house someplace else. Diana, tell them. Tell them what you said to me just the other day—”
But Diana Bonta reacted to this attention by emitting a single yelp, “Ohhhhhh!” and
stumbling from the room, tears in her eyes. The Crossroads was a liberal mix of longtime Latin-x
residents, artists and, by 2008, wealthy white professionals. They all knew no white man should
make a fourteen-year-old brown girl cry, so they were surprised when Terrance Lawton’s crisp,
woodwind tenor piped up in Sam’s defense.
“So what’s our leverage point?” he asked, striding toward the front. He had soft, saggy,
bags beneath his eyes and a quizzical grin. Was he a lawyer, too? People searched their minds,
trying to remember what he did. “If this condo’s going in like it or not, what can we get out of
it—as a neighborhood?”
“The variances,” Sam Bonifacio said. “That’s where we can press.”
“The variances. The variances.” Terrance chewed this over playfully, altering the syllable
emphasis, until the word seemed to hold a secret meaning. “I am familiar with that term,”
Terrance said. “But I have no idea what it means here.”
Sam scurried about the table where he’d laid out blueprints and pens, talking excitedly.
“The variances are changes in the local building code that have to be approved by the city,” he
explained. “To build a condo the size that they want, they are going to have to build closer to the
sidewalk than the city allows. They may need to build higher. Exceptions may need to be made
for sewer capacity—”
Terrance approached, like a parent examining a student’s art project, the tapered back of
his sweater vest, the starched arms of his red and blue patterned shirt, on display. “I’ve done a
little writing about real estate”—though the residents had no idea what he was talking about, they laughed as if they did—“What you’re talking about here is zoning. They’ve got a zoning issue, and if we don’t approve these variances to the zoning—”
“They can still build the building,” Sam said. “Just not the way they want.”
“That’s our leverage.”
“It is if we want to use it.”
Terrance turned and made a “not bad” expression, pulling his lips down on either side of
his limber face, raising his eyebrows. “So we could ask the developer for some perks. Or, if we
wanted to shoot big . . . I mean, I just moved in and all but that there’s an entire giant empty
building just two blocks down the street from here.”
Mark Sullivan raised his hand. “That used to be Redemptorist High School.”
“I know,” Terrance said. “I’m so old, I went there.”
“My brother did too, before they moved out south,” Mark said.
“So,” Terrance said. “We all got kids, or at least most of us do, even if everybody else is
smart enough not to bring them to these meetings.” He gestured toward the grocery door, beyond which Kelvin and KJ could be heard shouting. “Seems to me like if we asked Adelphi Projects to give us money for a school, open up that building, we’d be doing something that might make this neighborhood a better place.”
===============
>> Whitney: That's the end of that scene.
>> Brian: Yeah, that Ah, I have a lot of thoughts. (laughter) Yeah, that was, I think it's really courageous to go into something that's so fraught with not just cultural but political and socio economic issues. You know that it almost felt overwhelming to listen to thinking about, you know, because all of the angles you can come at it from And like, you know, you're thinking from your character's angles and at some points it felt like he was told in third person omniscient because, you know, your main characters were kind of like lurking at first, you know what I mean?
>> Whitney: Yes, that particular scene is told from the neighborhood's perspective.
>> Brian: Yeah. Yeah, that's what I felt like. Yeah. Yeah, that's yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was awesome.
>> Whitney: All that stuff is real. That condo is a real thing that did happen. Those conversations did occur. I have a lot of friends who live up in that neighborhood. It was easy to translate it.
>> Brian: I hope you don't lose any friends over it.
>> Sugi: I feel like that makes me think that we should do, like, an episode of how to translate bureaucracy into interesting scenes because you're so good at it.
>> Whitney: Well thanks.
>> Sugi: I never wanted I never wanna go to a local meeting that's anything like that (laughs). But they're super interesting to read. It really does seem like the kind of conversations that are going on around us all the time. Like in my neighborhood, like there's a there's a sign battle going on lawns about, you know? Oh, like it's over like zoning. And there's the signs and people have arguments about it. But, like, I never see anything like that in most fiction.
>> Brian: Yeah, and it also it also hit home for me just because, obviously, I mean, we live in West Harlem which is slowly... It's like it kind of feels like Brooklyn probably like pre 9/11 You know? It's like at that beginning phase, And so there's some of that going on and you see these weird condos going up that just don't fit into the row homes and like brownstones at all. And also it just made me think, because we're on the block association here and just the just the petty hijinks that go down like, you know, I remember there was this one woman who ordered two drinks at the Block Association meeting, and then she was so appalled at how how they were priced that she refused to pay for them. And so there was a big argument between a few members about how, uh and then finally, one of my friends who lives on 150th was just like, You know what? I'm paying for them. Let's just get the hell out of here. So yeah, it kind of felt it almost felt like you had recorded one of these meetings. Yeah, thank you both. Those were both really great in such different ways. It's really great to get a taste of two different styles of writing, some excited dig deeper into you guys work. And also Jim McPherson. I'm really excited about that too. I'm glad that we got to talk about him. So, yes. Is there anything else you guys want to say in terms of, like, you know, again, bring up? You know, you want to repeat what you guys what the site is again, just for the people who who might want to find it. But it's a very complicated you url.
>> Whitney: Well, I think we'd also be We should also say congratulations to you on your new book, Emerald city, which I know just came out recently and we'll be talking to you about that on the fiction/non/fiction podcast when you and Katie come to be on with us.
>> Brian: Oh, yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, I wasn't expecting that. That's awesome. That's really, really nice to hear from you, but yeah, I'm excited to be on your podcast and share somewhere my thoughts about about that crossover between later literature and politics because I think what you guys are doing is really important. So I will. I will close it out. Unless is there anything else you guys want to bring up?
>> Sugi: No, I think like, I guess maybe you're going to say again that to continue this crossover, listeners can find us at fiction slash non slash fiction by searching on any podcast platform, iTunes and stitcher and and all of that sort of stuff. And we are on lithub dot com under lithub radio and we would love to hear any listener ideas or feedback for our show. And thank you so much for having us on your show. This has been really fun.
>> Brian: Thank you guys for being on. Okay, that's it for today's episode. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and review on whichever platform you're listening. You can get in touch with us on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at @animalriotpress or through our website animalriotpress.com. This has been the 35th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot Press with me, your host Brian Birnbaum and featuring Whitney Terrell and VV Ganeshananthan of the fiction/non/fiction podcast. Our transcripts for our deaf and hard of hearing animals are provided by Jon Kay. And we're produced by Katie Rainey, without whom we'd be merely three of Shakespeare's 1000 monkeys banging on a typewriter.