Episode 46: The Escapist

January 9th, 2020
Hosted by Katie Rainey
Guests: David Puretz
Produced by Katie Rainey
Transcript by Jon Kay
Podcast Assistant: Dylan Thomas

Hey Animals! We're back with Episode 46, featuring writer and teacher David Puretz. David is the Editorial Director at Global City, an independent press that publishes the literary and cultural journal Global City Review, and a growing list of other books and anthologies, including his own: The Escapist, which is his debut novel. Join David and host Katie Rainey as they talk about Global City's history, publishing, and finally getting the work out there!

>> Katie: Welcome to the 46th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast brought to you by Animal Riot, a literary press for books that matter. I'm Katie Rainey, filling in for Brian Birnbaum while he’s taking some time off. I am happy to have with me here today writer and editor David Puretz. 

David Puretz is the Editorial Director at Global City, an independent press that publishes the literary and cultural journal Global City Review, and a growing list of other books and anthologies, including his own. As Editorial Director, he oversaw the relaunch of the journal and the publication of the newest online and print journal issue, Legacies. He is also the creator and founder of burly bird zine, a publication of Fortroyal Foundation, a non-profit for the conservation and preservation of the arts. Puretz teaches writing at Yeshiva University in New York City, where he currently resides. He earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the City College of New York, CUNY. The Escapist is his debut novel, due out when?

>> David: January 28th. We're about three weeks out.

>> Katie: Oh! Exciting. And this is your debut novel. Do you have any short stories or collections or anything out?

>> David: No, this is just the first book.

>> Katie: Okay. Awesome.

>> David: Yeah, I've had some shorter pieces published, but this is the first book.

>> Katie: How are you feeling about it? 

>> David: I'm nervous. I'm scared. I'm excited. All of those things

>> Katie: We've had a couple of debut authors on, and obviously Brian talked about it before his book came out in September. So a lot of newer writers and a lot of debut novelists, there's this kind of, like, big thing you put on your first book coming out and then immediately after, I hear everybody like, Oh, like my life didn't change. Nothing happened. It's just that my book's out in the world now. I don't know. Do you have that feeling? Are you battling with tha?

>> David: I've been working on this book for so long. I mean, I probably started on an early version of it 10 years ago. And it would be put away for a while, and then I'd return to it. And so I've been sitting with it for so long that honestly, I'm ready to move on. I'm excited to get it out there, and I'm excited for people to read it, But honestly, I am probably more excited to start something new and putting this thing to bed.

>> Katie: Well, before we really dig more into the escapist, I do want to talk about, like, where it's being published and why, and so, What is Global City?

>> David: Yeah, sure. So Global City. It's a writer's collective and it's a press, and it's been publishing Global City Review since '94. It was founded by Lindsay Abrams, and she was a professor of the writing program of the MFA program at City College. And then

>> Katie: So it is affiliated with City College.

>> David: It was affiliated with City College. But we re launched the press as an independent press.

>> Katie: OK.

>> David: But we are taking with it all of those amazing stories that we've published since '94. So it's been really fun bringing this press back to life and bringing the collective back to life.

>> Katie: Yeah. So what was the hiatus? When did it stop? And then when did it start back up?

>> David: So this issue Legacies that just came out last year was the first issue. And that was the inaugural issue that was with the launch of the press, okay, And before that, the previous journal waas from about three or four years ago.

>> Katie: Okay,

>> David: Three or four years before that. So, yeah, there was this somewhat long hiatus, and Lindsay and myself and a bunch of others, we decided to bring this thing back to life. And I mean, there was such a rich history of writing and some important pieces that people should read. That we shouldn't just let fade away.

>> Katie: Well, since 94, are there any writers we might recognize that's been published?

>> David: Yeah, yeah, I got a whole list here, and I could kind of read it off.

>> Katie: Yeah, tell me some.

>> David: lso, another change that we made when we re launched is that we made all of our content free. So before it was subscription based. So now it's totally free, and we felt that that was important as keeping with the core philosophy. And as part of the independent press, we wanted to make all of this past content free and accessible as well. So if you go back, you can look at all of the previous titles. And just to read some of these off you find works by National Book Award winners Joan Silber, Jean Valentine, Best Selling Novelists, Marilyn French, Mary Gordo,n Frederick Tootin, Grace Paley, Eve Ensler, Mark Dodie, Alfred Corn. A number of other poets from that time perio>> David: Eliot Weinberger, Felicia Bonaparte, Meghan Dom, Rebecca Chase, Ian Broner. And then there were a number of international writers, writers from Mexico, Bosnia, China. Some of the essays were just some of the pieces that were previously published. "Rediscovering Deaf / Mute Existence in film", "Vampires, Conquers and Other Monster Selves". A memoir by a man with AIDS who has now died, who wrote about the night he thought he contracted the virus. There's an interview with a gay cop from the eighties, New York City, and lots of reviews on art and other books. And there was Something by the Artists and Homeless Collaborative and a project by the New York Theological Society men's group at Sing Sing. So there was such a rich history of these writers going back to 94. 20/25 years ago. And so we resurrected it, and we're taking that same philosophy and we're moving forward with that. And I think something that we're planning on doing is sometime in the future, maybe for three issues down the line will probably do a best of and will probably publish some of these authors and their pieces from 10/15 years ago. The first issue was called Sexual Politics and and you know this is mid nineties and it's really interesting reading them again now with where we are now with the metoo movement and seeing them in this new light is really interesting.

>> Katie: Are there some that you kind of cringe that were published in those editions? Or you're just interested to read the perspective at that time?

>> David: It's interesting to read the perspective. I mean, I like cringe worthy stuff. Yeah, so the cringe is good, I think

>> Katie: Anything particular come to mind?

>> David: Just because we just did a did a new post about it was this interview with the gay cop and he he was anonymous for this piece stayed anonymous because at the time he would lose his career. But he talked about this encounter he had where he arrested someone. But he also had this really strong connection with the person. And he felt like there was this thing, this connection, that this kind of sexual tension and he talked about that in the piece, and I feel like a lot of that still applies. I think it's still hard to be a gay cop.

>> Katie: Can we still get a copy of that available?

>> David: Yeah, All of the past pieces are all on the website. [See here for the full interview]

>> Katie: So you print all through Ingram?

>> David: Well moving forward. We're printing through Ingram in addition to publishing online.

>> Katie: So they're all print on demand. You're not doing print runs? That was just really question for me.

>> David: Yeah. So what we did with this issue is that we did a small print run of about 300 copies, and we slowly sold them off, but yeah moving forward solely POD. Because we don't have the money, of course, to do anything and POD is an affordable option with that. And really, it's the, you know, we've moved to the digital space. Before it was all print, and now it's the website that has taken center stage for publication.

>> Katie: So what about the press itself? That has not been around since 94? 

>> David: Yeah we've done a lot of books, So there were eight books before mine. The last one was "Nortada, the North Wind" by Michelle Y. Valladares, who is this part of the collective. She's our poetry editor, So it's a really interesting book. And then some anthologies. We have an anthology called "The Breast", which is all about boobs. A piece called Ghost Stories. "The Power to Dream", "Interviews With Women in the Creative Arts", another piece called "Girls", which is about girlhood and womanhood. And that's also an anthology and that we had a lot of great writers for that. Maya Angelou wrote a piece about that.

>> Katie: Wow, I'm feeling there's a lot about, like sexual identity and gender. And things like that. Is that a big theme of the press in a way or is that just kind of coincidence?

>> David: That's that, Well, that's a huge part of being human, saying ordinary, and that's really what it's about. Celebrating the the ordinary life and the subversiveness of that existence, but also this idea... the idea of the Global City right where we're all kind of in this together and that these complex feelings that we think we have individually, that no one else has is actually something that we all kind of share and struggle with and go through. And by writing about it, by publishing it, it makes us feel a little less alone.

>> Katie: Oh, I love that. So is that what you would say you're looking for in submissions?

>> David: Yes. So the next issue is called... well the theme is setting the record straight. And the idea is with the first piece as part of the relaunch Legacies, that's kind of representative of the past. Legacies is somewhat representative of things that occurred in the past, but still influencing the present. And this issue "Setting the Record Straight" is really about this present moment about truth telling and what is truth and fake news and all that. And then the next issue, which will come out at the end of this year, is the theme is gonna be "Do we have a future?"" So these three pieces will

>> Katie: That's timely right now.

>> David: Yeah, so and so we have got a past, present future, and that's the idea that we wanted to capture with these three. And then by the end of 2020 we bundle them together as well and have the three together as a set. So they'll be great. They can stand alone on their own, but also that they'll work together as a set too.

>> Katie: So the next upcoming deadline is January 31st

>> David: Right. So open submissions now through January 31st. So please submit. Email submissions@globalcitypress.com and you can get more information about submission requirements on the website globalcitypress.com.

>> Katie: Okay, All right. So the press So is your book the first and kind of the re launch?

>> David: Mine's the first in the relaunch.

>> Katie: That's a lot of pressure. 

>> David: It is a lot of pressure, but I wanted to get it out there. And when Lindsay approached me about helping to bring Global City back, one of the things was publishing the book, and I had spent not a ton of time but a good amount of time querying agents and reaching out trying it and, you know, and I had some bites, but nothing really panned out, and at that point I said, All right, I could do this thing That sounds really, really interesting. Or I could keep throwing this thing out into the dark and seeing if it lands somewhere. And so I was done with that whole thing with the cold calling, and I just wanted to be done with that process. But so I was really excited

>> Katie: It is a soul sucking process and there's nothing artistic about it. It's really, really hard. And I appreciate writers who you know, I think people, I need to be more honest about their stories and how they got published and like they're like how realistic the current publishing landscape is. And we have said over and over again on this podcast that even self publishing, in its own way, it gets a very bad rap because there are good self published books out there. Some people just don't want to deal with the with what it takes to get it published at any press, which is understandable. Do you feel because we've been asked this question about you know, Brian's book was the first book published from our press. Do you feel that it's like self publishing or not?

>> David: That's a great question. I feel like it's this middle ground territory because it is, you know, we are a small press, but we are using the same means that other self publishers use. When there is a lack of money, you do what you have to do and the thing is these are good quality books. I guess this would be a plug for Ingram here.

>> Katie: I mean, they published both of ours. They print both of our books. So why not?

>> David: I was really impressed with the quality of the book. I worked at HarperCollins for six years, and the quality is perhaps just as good, if not better. Granted this was when I was working there, this was 10 years ago.

>> Katie: Who does Harper Collins distribute? 

>> David: Ingram distributes for everybody but they use printers from all over the world. I mean a lot because they have. They have the budget to do big printing when necessary, though what I like about this, too, is that you know we're printing in the United States. We're not printing in China, which is what most big publishers do. They have their books printed on the cheap in China. Yeah, cheap labor here, you know, I think that there's something to be said for keeping it somewhat local and printing in the US. And I don't think it's something to be ashamed of. I think we're at a very interesting time in publishing. The last 10, 15 years have been really interesting, and there are a lot of great writers who have gone from publishers to self publishing, and there have been a lot of self publishers who have been discovered as a result of that and then have then been picked up by bigger presses. And you really just have to measure what is going to be best for you in your book and what do you want to accomplish. But there are a lot of small presses all over the United States that are doing really, really interesting things, and a lot of them are using this POD tech and making really high quality books. Yeah, I mean, if the writing is good, and the editing is good. What's the difference?

>> Katie: How do you feel about Amazon? 

>> David: That's something. How do you feel?

>> Katie: We sell through Amazon. I mean, you know, like, honestly, we felt that it was sort of literary suicide if we didn't use it, because, I mean, just in terms of selling and it and for the marketing purposes, it's been really helpful to use Amazon. People trusted and people want to buy through. And we feel looking at the numbers that selling through Amazon has been instrumental.

>> David: Oh, yeah. You can't not sell through Amazon.

>> Katie: Yeah, there's some small presses that resist it. And I admire them.

>> David: Yeah. Uh, it's a tornado that just keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger, and you can't help but get sucked up by it. I don't know what the exact number is, but they dominate like 70% of book sales in the United States. So there are other things you can do to be a responsible publisher. If you reject that then you're rejecting 70% of potential. So it's something that you can't do. It's something you can't ignore. It's just too big.

>> Katie: Yeah, well, what's the next book coming out after yours? Do you guys have it?

>> David: Well, we know what it's gonna be. It's gonna be a poetry collection by Michelle Valladares's poetry collection, her next poetry collection. And she is the MFA program director for the City College. So she's next on the docket. And then after that, we'll see.

>> Katie: Are you open for submissions?

>> David: The open submission is really at this point just for the journal. The books, because it's so because we're so small we're really just doing one a year at this point. So at some point that will change at some point. We will probably be open to looking out for interesting works. But we're not there yet.

>> Katie: How many people are on the team?

>> David: So there are nine members of the collective, and Lindsay has taken a little bit of a back seat. She's now calling herself consulting editor, but you know, she's still the heart of the press and everyone else's great. Everyone's really interesting, all writers, and that's the best part about it. We're not business people, we’re writers who really appreciate and like good writing. And we've all appreciated Global City press for what it was and what it has been and hopefully what it will be.

>> Katie: So what about the zine? What is Whirly Bird?

>> David: So I lived in Burlington, Vermont, for a couple of years, and I was doing quite a bit of writing. I had a residency at Vermont Studio Center, and I was really interested in publishing stuff that my friends were writing and publishing my own stuff. And I knew a lot of interesting writers and a lot of interesting illustrators. And so I was just doing this kind of cheap zine, and it ended up being kind of popular and kind of fun locally in Vermont. It didn't get much more traction beyond that state, but it was still a fun project, and it was printed really, really cheap on crappy paper. But that was kind of the appeal of it. That's what zines are all about. Kind of underground publishing.

>> Katie: Yeah, our friend Caits Meissner, who has been on the podcast before, is definitely a zine maker, and she designed that one there. So I have always wanted to make I always wanted to be like a teenager making my own zine, but yeah, I mean, I did like in my journals, but nothing like that, that I ever printed for anyone writing like that. 

>> David: Yeah, I did, too. And I never did it. But then in Vermont, I had this little hiatus and was like, You know what? I'm gonna do it. I'm just gonna do this thing. And I did it. It was fun while it lasted, and I met a lot of other people who did zines, and we collaborated on a lot of different projects. But it was just the right time in my life for it because this was right after I left Harper Collins and Charlotte, my wife, who was my girlfriend at the time, we just traveled for about three months all over the country. I think we hit 43 states, I think, and just reading a lot and talking a lot about writing, and that's kind of where it was born, was on the road. But really it was in Burlington when we you know? Then we landed in Burlington. That's where Charlotte went to grad school at UVM. And then, you know, then we made it happen. I made it happen.

>> Katie: Yeah. Yeah, well, you also teach, right? 

>> David: Yeah. So I teach at Yeshiva, and I've been teaching there for a little over a year now.

>> Katie: And you teach creative writing?

>> David: I teach writing. So mostly first you're writing. And some advanced writing classes. Well, but the first year writing classes that that's my bread and butter.

>> Katie: Okay,

>> David: so it's called different things at different schools. Sometimes it's called first year writing. Sometimes they call it first year seminar, sometimes freshman composition. At Yeshiva they call it first year writing. And I taught first year writing at ST John's.

>> Katie: Okay. And you came directly from HarperCollins to teaching?

>> David: No, so I left Harper Collins in 2008 and then we traveled for a while, and then we went to Burlington. And then I got the right and grand road there, and I bartend id in Burlington, and I did the zine, And then we came back to the city, and that's when I went for the MFA. And that's when I started teaching, and I fell in love with it.

>> Katie: What were you doing at HarperCollins? Will you talk dirt about Harper Collins for me?

>> David: It was a great experience. Right out of college, I wanted to be an editor. In between my junior and senior year. I had an internship at a very small press called Four Walls Eight Windows

>> Katie: I like that. That's a cool name.

>> David: It is a super cool name. And it was a very small room run by this guy named John Oakes. And so he founded Four Walls, Eight Windows, and then he started or books, and I worked with an editor there. Her name was Catherine Belden. She's an incredible editor and so that it was just a fabulous experience. I got to dig through their gigantic slush pile as their little intern. And I cut my teeth on it and I couldn't get enough of it. So then I, you know, it's like, that's what I want to be doing. I wanna be editing. I want to be writing, Just want to be involved in that creative process in any way I can. And then after I graduated, I applied for a number of editing jobs. And then I realized how hard those jobs are to come by and how competitive it is because anyone that wants to work in publishing wants to work as an editor. And so I did NYU's Summer Publishing Institute. I don't know if you've heard of that. They're these different publishing institutes that most of them are a couple of months long, and they give you an overview of the publishing landscape. This was a long time ago in the publishing landscape and it was very different. This was 2003. It was a very long time ago.

>> Katie: I wonder what those courses are like now.

>> David: Right? Very different. In fact, my brother now teaches at NYU, and their publishing institute. My brother works at the Times now doing video editing, so video was never part of it back in 2003 but obviously they got with the times. They followed.

>> Katie: Now everybody has a book tube.

>> David: Now everybody has a book tube. And so from there I met my future boss, Andrew Rosen, who hired me kind of on the spot. And she was the president of the Special Markets department at HarperCollins. So I did special markets. So special markets was basically anywhere that a book is sold that's not a bookstore. That's kind of a simple way of explaining it. So I learned a lot just from being on that side of it, and I did get to do some editing stuff because we did these custom prints of HarperCollins books, that we would customize for different customers, different clients. And so I got involved in that and premium sales. And so it was a valuable experience.

>> Katie: So did some of that special marketing help you with publicizing your own book?

>> David: A little bit? I think I learned a lot about publishing. The problem is, I left in 2008 and it's been 12 years. In these 12 years, the publishing landscape has changed dramatically.

>> Katie: What would you say the biggest differences between now and 2008?

>> David: There's been a lot more conglomeration. And so before I think there were a number of presses that were thriving and now they've conjoined.

>> Katie: RIP Tin House.

>> David: That's right. That's right. And so, of course, Amazon is a big reason why things have changed so much. And, you know, we thought ebooks was gonna be a major game changer, but it hasn't been that big of a game changers we thought it was gonna be.

>> Katie: Which I'm not sad about

>> David: Yeah, neither am I. But what I am excited about, which is something I've always loved. Audiobooks. And podcasts. Now, well, you know, podcasts. It's a relatively new thing. But I always loved listening to books on tape. I'm hearing the author read his or her own work. And I love how this part of publishing audiobooks...

>> Katie: It does seem to be booming.

>> David: And I think that might be one of the biggest changes.

>> Katie: Yeah, we really love podcasting, and we're hoping to have the audiobook done this summer to release at the one year mark of Brian's book. So because we don't have a hardback So rather than, like, you know, another paperback release we're going to do the audio book release.

>> David: Fabulous. Is Brian gonna read?

>> Katie: He is going to read. We've been already practicing that. It's great. It's a fun new experience for him because it's totally different than hosting the podcast. Hosting the podcast we can sound how we want. We even tried to record in here where we're recording the podcast right now. But while we can like, you know, be lenient with certain sirens going on in the background, we could not do it with the audio book. We're like It needs to be clean. So we've actually been working on rigging a studio out of our bathroom rather than having to go rent studio space and schedule time. Because you know, we live here. It's easier if we can just, like, do it record when we can. So we're trying to right now. Future authors, we won't make come sit in our bathroom and read their book.

>> David: I think that sounds pretty good. I mean, hey, studio was a studio studio. As long as it's quiet, no one's gonna know.

>> Katie: Well, hopefully for future authors, we have money for professional space.

>> David: That's really exciting. That's great. And I think more and more people, I think, partly are as a result of the success of podcasts. I think audio books have gotten a lot more popular as well.

>> Katie: Are you recording your book for audiobooks?

>> David: Not yet. Yeah, hopefully, I'd like to do it. I don't know if I want to read it or if I want someone else to read it. That's still TBD at this point.

>> Katie: We've had a couple offers from people who have said they want to read their books. My feeling is, if the author wants to record their own book and as long as they're not just, like, totally monotone, you know, they have some personality in their voice then they can read their book. Which Brian is funny. He and he probably better than anyone can read his incredibly intense vocabulary.

>> David: Yeah, there is something special about hearing the author read his or her own stuff when it's when it's this voice actor. There's something lost there.

>> Katie: Yeah.

>> David: There's definitely something lost, though I guess it does depend. I mean, some people don't have the voice.

>> Katie: Some people don't have any kind of performance. And then which is fine. You get somebody else to read, but yeah. Yeah, well...

>> David: No, I was just gonna say I would love. I would love to do it at some point, and hopefully we'll be able to

>> Katie: Well, can we record a sneak peek of that audiobook right now? And have you read?

>> David: Let's do it so. I can read from the first chapter and...

>> Katie: Will you tell us a little bit about this?

>> David: Sure. Yeah, sure. So it's called the Escapist. It's about a young man. His name is Billy Shoot. He's in his early twenties and he's always been an escapist. He had a really difficult childhood. His mother died when he was a baby, so we never knew his mother. And he had a very abusive father. And his father and his brother and his grandfather were all military men. They are all military men, and this takes place in the 2000s during the Iraq war. So his father is in Iraq and his brother is in Iraq. But he does not enlist. And that that was a decision that he came to partly as a result of him being this escapist. Part of the way he escapes that how we learned to escape was through drug use. And so he had been using a number of different types of drugs since he was young. He was prescribed Adderall and Ritalin, Dexedrine from a really young age. And his father would kind of hand feed him meds of his own late at night when his step mother wasn't around. And so, anyway, so fast forward. He's in his early twenties, his father has returned from war, and he finds out that his own father has escaped. And he left the house that Billy grew up in, in the middle of the night and disappeared. And so he decides to find dad and those of the 1st 2 words of the book.

>> Katie: Okay. All right.

=========================

Be sure to check out "The Escapist" by David Puretz

https://globalcitypress.com/the-escapist-by-david-puretz/

=========================

>> David: I can stop there.

>> Katie: Oh, what happened next?

>> David: Well, so then Uncle George eventually leaves the bedroom, and Billy takes out the journal again and does a second entry. And then he goes off to the nursing home to see his grandmother, who he hasn't seen in a while, kind of interrogate her to some degree. But that proves futile because she has Alzheimer's, so it doesn't get him very far, and from there he just keeps traveling, keeps trying to track down some leads to find his dad and still battling his own demons and thinking back to the trauma that he had with his father while he was growing up and just being able to write about it was really what became important in his journey the way it's not about finding his dad. It was about well, it wasn't about actually finding him. It was about going on this journey to find him.

>> Katie: You said you've been working on this more or less for 10 years. What inspired? What would hooked you to this story in the first place?

>> David: Yeah, this story has taken so many different twists and turns, and it was so many different things. So originally, you know, in my early twenties, I was really into frame narratives and met affection and meta narratives and stories within stories and stories about writers. I just love these stories about writers who were also writing. Paul Auster was a big inspiration for me.

>> Katie: Would you say it's like post-modern, in a way?

>> David: Yeah, I guess, But I think writers have been doing this long before the postmodern era. Frame narratives go back forever.

>> Katie: I don't know if it has some element of, like zooming out and kind of pulling down that fourth wall at all.

>> David: Yeah, Well, so I was really interested in that originally. And I knew that I wanted to write a story about a writer and I tried it and I got somewhere and it just wasn't working because I was originally writing about a fiction writer who was writing his own fiction. And so the book was his fiction and the story of him writing the fiction and the things that he experienced that inspired his fiction. But eventually, you know, and I discovered this late. What really worked was when Billy was writing about his real life experiences not writing fiction. So the element of him writing fiction was completely removed from the book. And so he originally, I had him kind of turning into a fiction writer and showing where that inspiration came from. But it didn't work. And so my editor, um, we ended up cutting about 60-80 pages from the book of his fiction.

>> Katie: Was that gutting?

>> David: That was incredibly gutting because that's how the whole thing started. You know, it all started from that, but that's that's the way these things work. It was really hard, but she was right. It's much better without it. Just it's when he's writing about his past and his real life experiences, it's just, um it's much more engaging. And when he's writing about fiction, his fiction stories that I wanted to to show how they were inspired by what he was experiencing, it became this alternate story. So I think readers had just too hard of a time connecting those dots. But that's what I was interested in. I was interested in sending the reader down this rabbit hole, but eventually I realized that it was too much of a rabbit hole. And so I needed to back it up.

>> Katie:  Okay. Yeah. Also, it'll be out January 28. Yeah. You having a big launch party?

>> David: Yeah, we're having a party at Pianos.

>> Katie: Oh, I love that bar.

>> David: Yeah, we're doing it at the upstairs lounge and should be a lot of fun

>> Katie: Is it open? Like if you're in New York? 

>> David: Yeah. If you're in New York, come on by Pianos upstairs lounge. I'm gonna be in conversation with Lindsay Abrams and Lindsay... I should mention I should throw a plug out there for her. She has written three books. And she wrote a piece called Our History in New York, Something called "Double Vision" and "Charting by the Stars" and has a new collection of short stories coming out. So we're gonna be in conversation with each other, and it'll be a fun party.

>> Katie: Awesome. And then you can catch David reading for Animal Riot in New York on February 9th at 8 p.m. at DTUT. So come out and you'll have books for sale, I'm sure at that one.

>> David: Oh, great. Oh, and by the way, I live very close to DTUT.

>> Katie: Awesome, perfect.

>> David: It's like a 10 minute walk.

>> Katie: Oh, great. You just walk over. There comes some come out either one of those nights and get his book The Escapist out January 28th. David, thank you so much for being on and sharing part of your book with us. I think you have a lovely audiobook voice?

>> David:  Oh, thank you. Well, thank you so much for having me on.

>> Katie: Yeah, fun time for telling us all about Global City and everything. People, you writers who are listening should submit, right?

>> David: Yes, please do till January 31st. Submissions at Global City Press dot com

>> Katie: Awesome. Thanks again, David. 

>> David: Thank you, Katie.

>> Katie: 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 46th episode of the Animal Riot Podcast with me, your host Katie Rainey and featuring David Puretz. Our transcripts for our Deaf and hard of hearing animals are provided by Jonathan Kay and we're produced by me, Katie Rainey. See you animals later.