Podcast
But I Digress: How Writers Make it Work
Hosted by Michael Hickins · EN
Michael Hickins is a former editor at The Wall Street Journal, published fiction writer, and noted columnist.
10episodes
Episodes
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Digressing with Rick Whitaker
Sep 6, 202200:42:56Tap to summarizeRick Whitaker, an author and editor, has been a part of the New York artistic community for more than two decades, and talks about the current publishing scene, the state of the human project, how to find a publisher, and what it's like to judge books for literary prizes. Rick is the author of "Assuming the Position: A Memoir of Hustling" (1999), as well as "The First Time I Met Frank O'Hara: Reading Gay American Writers" (2004), and "An Honest Ghost," published by Jaded Ibis Press in 2013, which is a novel consisting entirely of sentences recycled from other books (a literary first which members of the Oulipo praised and John Ashbery chose as a book of the year). He is Theater and Concerts Manager at Columbia University's Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in New York City and creator and editor of ExquisitePandemic.com, a free online literary arts journal now archived at exquisitepandemicarchive.com. He’s also been a judge for the LA Times Book Prizes since 2017. He's finishing his fourth book -- "On Sketchy Sex and Hardcore Recreational Drugs."
Transcribe →Digressing with Len Kunz
Jul 19, 202200:53:07Tap to summarizeLen Kuntz is the author of five books, most recently the personal essay collection, THIS IS ME, BEING BRAVE, out now from Everytime Press. He won’t want me to say this because he’ll thinks it sounds “braggy” [using air quotes] but he’s written more than 1,200 stories, along with five novels and most recently, THIS IS ME, BEING BRAVE. You can find more of his writing on his blog. Having grown up poor, Len worked and saved obsessively until, at the age of 46, he was able to retire to the country and become a full-time writer. This is his story.
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Digressing with Whitney Durmick
Jul 5, 202200:48:07Tap to summarizeWhitney Durmick -- startup whisperer by day, genre-bending existentialist writer by night -- talks to me about her formerly itinerant existence, and how she has confounded the expectations of the traditional publishing industry by striking out on her own. Her first book, HALF WILD: A prayer for a generation of roaming malcontents, came out in June 2022. Having once-upon-a-time dreamt of becoming an investigative reporter (inspired in part by her ongoing love of trench coats), Whitney investigated the options of the self-published writer, plumbed the heights of social networking (in-person as well as digital), and now shares her experiences and the excitement of a new book (which you can order here).
Transcribe →Digressing with Robert Vaughan
Jun 21, 202200:44:49Tap to summarizeRobert Vaughan is an indie publisher and writer whose most recent book, Askew, can be ordered here. If found a lot of his opinions fascinating, especially coming from someone who sits on both sides of the table. Among his bits of advice: to figure out where to pitch your stuff, find three or four writers you like and with whom you feel some commonality, and pitch the places that are publishing them. (This seems obvious, but most people go about it exactly the other way around -- they find publishers or agents they like and then try to figure out which writers they work with.) He also said something great about genres -- that they're great for bookstores (but not necessarily for writers!)
Transcribe →Digressing With Meg Tuite
Jun 7, 202200:39:47Tap to summarizeIn this episode, Meg Tuite talks about her 30 years as a hospice worker and how that manifests itself in her writing, her collaboration with other artists, and her desire for different audiences. Tuite is author of a novel-in-stories, Domestic Apparition (San Francisco Bay Press), a short story collection, Bound By Blue, (Sententia Books), and won the Twin Antlers Collaborative Poetry award from (Artistically Declined Press) for her poetry collection, Bare Bulbs Swinging, Grace Notes (Unknown Press). Her writing has appeared in numerous journals including Berkeley Fiction Review, 34th Parallel, Epiphany, Monkeybicycle and Boston Literary Magazine. She teaches workshops through Bending Genres and is an associate editor at Narrative Magazine. Her work has been published in over 600 literary magazines and over fifteen anthologies including: Choose Wisely: 35 Women Up To No Good. Meg has been nominated over 15 times for the Pushcart Prize, won first and second place in Prick of the Spindle contest, five-time finalist at Glimmer Train, finalist of the Gertrude Stein award and 3rd prize in the Bristol Short Story Contest. She is also the editor of eight anthologies. He work is included in the Best Small Fictions of 2021. You can order her most recent book, White Van (Unlikely Books) here.
Transcribe →Digressing with Davis Schneiderman
May 24, 202200:59:03Tap to summarizeYou've probably never heard of Davis Schneiderman, and that's fine with him. As he says during this podcast, "it all ends in anonymity and obsolescence, and we have to come to terms with that." His forthcoming story collection There's No Appropriate Emoji (MadHat Press) came out in May 2022, and can be ordered here. Throughout this podcast, he offers a number of important insights about the life of a contemporary writer (such as that if you engage in too many different types of things "people don't know what to do with you" which makes it harder to sell your work). He is "against earnestness and nostalgia" and isn't writing in order to get laid. ("It's words on a page -- it's not me.") There's a bracing quality to his point of view, and it's also reassuring -- if you can convince yourself to let go of the romantic fantasy of the "successful writer." Comparing the thriving indie press scene to a radio dial, he says, "I'm glad those other channels exist on the lower end of the dial because those are the channels I really like to listen to." Schneiderman invites us to write for the pleasure of writing, and in collaboration with other likeminded artists, because the work in the moment is really all we can aspire to. Schneiderman is a multimedia artist and writer and the author and editor of eight books, including the novels Drain (TriQuarterly/Northwestern), Abecedarium (Chiasmus), BLANK: A Novel, [SIC], and INK. (Jaded Ibis); the co-edited collections Retaking the Universe: Williams S. Burroughs in the Age of Globalization (Pluto) and The Exquisite Corpse: Chance and Collaboration in Surrealism’s Parlor Game (Nebraska); as well as the audiocollage Memorials to Future Catastrophes (Jaded Ibis). His creative work has appeared in numerous publications including Fiction International, The Chicago Tribune, The Iowa Review, TriQuarterly, and Exquisite Corpse. He is Associate Dean of Faculty at Lake Forest College.
Transcribe →Digressing with Alan Murray
May 10, 202200:39:47Tap to summarizeAlan Murray is the former editor of the Wall Street Journal digital, a pioneer in television business journalism, was recently head of Pew Research and for several years now the CEO of Fortune media and the author of the widely read daily email newsletter CEO Daily. Murray's most recent book, out May 10, 2022, is called Tomorrow's Capitalist. As a publishing industry veteran, as well as a keen observer of the business world, Murray discusses the publishing industry, and the changes he's observed over the past three decades.
Transcribe →Digressing with Colin Dodds
Apr 26, 202200:52:16Tap to summarizeColin Dodds has several books to his name, including Ms. Never and Windfall. He’s made his living as a journalist, editor, copywriter and video producer. His work has appeared in Gothamist, The Washington Post and more than three hundred other publications. Colin’s poetry collection Spokes of an Uneven Wheel was published by Main Street Rag Publishing Company in 2018. He has also produced what I call writing-as-an-app -- his Forget This Good Thing I Just Said is a collection of aphorisms served up randomly by an app of the same name, and just might be the unwritten future of writing. In this podcast, Dodds talks about balancing family and financial responsibilities with the need to write, how his life matches up to his youthful fantasies of what it would be like to become a writer, and the place of self-publishing. He's well-placed to talk about that, having been published by independent publishers as well as having run a publishing company and having self-published as well. He offers interesting insights into book marketing and publicity -- "a book is exciting because it's new," he says at one point, explaining the lengthy publicity ramp-up for his forthcoming book, Pharoni. You can find all his books here.
Transcribe →Digressing with TJ Beitelman
Apr 11, 202201:18:00Tap to summarizeTJ Beitelman is a writer and teacher who most recent books have been published by the prestigious Black Lawrence Press. We talk about the relationship he's developed with his publisher, the way he thinks of his audience, and how he makes a living. One of my favorite takeaways from this talk is TJ's assertion that, "everybody lucks into everything," which says a lot about his humility but also puts our efforts at getting published and making a living as writers into very good perspective.
Transcribe →Digressing with Jenna Banks
Mar 29, 202200:41:39Tap to summarizeJenna Banks has written a book called I Love Me More: How to Find Happiness and Success through Self-Love, which she published through Braintrust Ink. Jenna walks us through the creation and marketing of this book, from how she decided to go the route of "hybrid" publishing, to how she chose this publisher over, to hiring a developmental editor and then a publicist, to how she uses social media to build her brand (and her audience), and how she intends to use this book as part of a business based on public speaking and workshops. Jenna offers us a clear-eyed view of the role book publishing can play in a broader marketing strategy, and the perspective not of someone who always wanted to be a writer, but rather of someone who sees the value of writing in that larger context, and is attuned to its financial aspects.
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