carmen maria machado

On this episode of Articulate Experience—four writers discuss the role of God in how they think, and live. 

Now in his 80s, the poet Billy Collins isn’t waiting for the afterlife to find joy— his heaven is here on earth. 

John Darnielle left Catholicism more than two decades ago, but the Church’s shortcomings haven’t short-changed his faith. 

Though Vikram Paralkar maintains a cultural connection to Hinduism, he looks to existentialist philosophers and modern scientists to shape his understanding of the universe.  

Carmen Machado was raised in what she describes as “a chill Methodist” household. Today, she’s an atheist, but along the way, explored evangelism.

• [01:35 ] Billy Collins 
• [16:08 ] John Darnielle
• [27:51 ] Vikram Paralkar
• [37:00 ] Carmen Machado

Articulate Experience examines stories of humanity, resilience, and wisdom through the words of some of today’s greatest writers.

Articulate Experience is a production of the Articulate Foundation.

More at articulateshow.org

Queer people need warning stories too.

Welcome to our LGBT podcast! In this episode, we talk with Nancy Agabian and Carmen Maria Machado!

Writer and literary organizer Nancy Agabian (she/her) shares the LGBT book that saved her life: In The Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado. It is a memoir about an abusive queer relationship Carmen had with an ex-girlfriend. Then we meet Carmen (she/her) to discuss the writing of her memoir and how it was like passing a kidney stone - something she needed to do to move on to get to the writing she wanted to do. 

Episode transcripts are available at thisqueerbook.com/podcast/inthedreamhouse

Buy the books we discuss on this episode!
Visit thisqueerbook.com/bookshop to purchase In the Dream House and Nancy's novel The Fear of Large and Small Nations.

Become an Associate Producer!
Become an Associate Producer of our podcast through a $20/month sponsorship on Patreon! A professionally recognized credit, you can gain access to Associate Producer meetings to help guide our podcast into the future! Get started today: patreon.com/thisqueerbook

Credits
Host/Founder: J.P. Der Boghossian
Executive Producer: Jim Pounds
Associate Producers: Archie Arnold, Natalie Cruz, Paul Kaefer, Nicole Olila, Joe Perazzo, Bill Shay, and Sean Smith
Patreon Subscribers: Awen Briem, Stephen D., Thomas Michna, and Gary Nygaard.

E-Lending Library
Quatrefoil Library has created a curated lending library made up of the books featured on our podcast! If you can’t buy these books, then borrow them! Link: https://libbyapp.com/library/quatrefoil/curated-1404336/page-1

This week I have been forced to up my game.  

Our guest is Carmen Maria Machado, and her works is not for the lazy or faint-hearted. From her dizzying collection of short fiction, Her Body and Other Parties, to her one-of-a-kind memoir, In the Dream House, Carmen’s writing forces a humble interviewer such as me, to question how we talk about books, author, character, truth, fiction and all the messy space in between.

In the Dream House  deconstructs what a memoir is and can do, and I had to really think about the questions I wanted to ask, and how to ask them. It is, nominally, a narrative of domestic abuse in a same-sex relationship, but Carmen chooses to tell that story using every literary tool in her (and everyone else’s) toolbox. The result is electrifying.

We talk about privacy versus public, what it’s like to write about sex you’ve actually had, hypochondria, double-standards and the lure of horror and gothic as a way to tell a real-life story of violence and trauma. 

It’s not all dark though. We laugh a lot. Mostly at my awkwardness. 

Enjoy! 

Her Body and Other Parties and In the Dream House are both published by Greywolf Press in North America and Serpent’s Tail in the UK.

Other books discussed in this episode include:

• The Argonauts (2015), by Maggie Nelson
• The Ghost Variations (2021), by Kevin Brockmeier
• A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip: A Memoir of Seventh Grade (2014), by Kevin Brockmeier
• Proxies: Essays Near Knowing (2016), by Brian Blanchfield
• Monster Portraits (2018), by Sofia Samatar
• The Hot Zone (1994), by Richard Preston
• The Haunting of Hill House (1959), by Shirley Jackson
• The Bloody Chamber (1979), by Angela Carter

Support the show on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/TalkingScaredPod

Come talk books on Twitter @talkscaredpod, on Instagram, or email direct to talkingscaredpod@gmail.com.

Thanks to Adrian Flounders for graphic design.

THE NEWS:

1. FCBD 2020 titles get teased
2. Wonder Woman #750 launching with over 20 covers
3. Spider-Woman gets a new costume
4. Marvel Comics March 2020 solicitations
5. TRANSFORMERS vs. TERMINATOR in 2020 Event
6. Jonathan Hickman & Mike Huddleston's DECORUM #1 out in March
7. Batman and Doomsday Clock End

TOP BOOKS OF LAST WEEK:

Dave

1. Joker: Killer Smile #2 (W: Jeff Lemire, A: Andrea Sorrentino)
2. The Low, Low Woods #1 (W: Carmen Maria Machado A: Dani, Tamra Bonvillain)

Forrest

1. Wonder Woman: Dead Earth #1 (Daniel Warren Johnson)
2. Skulldigger and Skeleton Boy #1 (W: Jeff Lemire, A: Tonci Zonjic)
3. ComicBookRoundUp
   1. Critic: King Thor #4 (9.8)
   2. Fan: Basketful of Heads #3 (9.5)
       

SEGMENT: 2020 Predictions - one good thing and one bad thing that will happen in comics or the comics industry next year and why

1. Dave: X-Men will get an event and it’ll bleed into Marvel Studios hype / At least one major writer from DC will jump to Marvel
2. Forrest: Neil Gaiman will make a full-scale return to comics / More celebrity editorial lines

TOP BOOKS FOR NEXT WEEK:

1. Dave: Spider-Ham (W: Zeb Wells, A: Will Robson)
2. Forrest: Incoming! #1

JUDGING BY THE COVER JR.:

1. Dave: Doctor Strange #1 (Phil Noto)
2. Forrest: Peter Porker, The Spectacular Spider-Ham (Wendell Dalit)
    

INTERVIEW: The Low, Low Woods writer Carmen Maria Machado and artist Dani join us for an interview to talk horror, the new series, and Hill House Comics.  

• Can you tell us a little bit about how the creative team came together on the title?
• Did you learn anything when creating this series and its first issue?
• Why is the comic book medium right for this story?
• Dani, you're so good at making the somewhat ordinary interesting and scary (I'm thinking of the trash outside the house early in the book as the girls ride their bikes, or the girls trying to remember what happened and their heads are made up of hands, parrots, and other things), how do you approach something static and give it life?
• When it comes to character creation where do you start, Vee and Eldora feel so real!
• So Rob Reiner directed Sea Dogs (we see his name on the marquee outside the theater), which also happens to be the backup story in this first wave of Hill House Comics. Why Reiner?
• Carmen, I had to write this down, "babies were born with placentas black as soot...their mothers were birthing coal itself" god that is horrifying! When working in a visual medium do you need to strike a balance between prose style horror like this and visual horror?
• The use of color by Tamra Bonvillain is fabulous, what goes into creating a color palette for a series?
• I'm always curious, was there a working list of titles for Low, Low Woods?
• Who is on your mount rushmore of creators you'd like to work with?
• Joe Hill was on the podcast 7 or so weeks ago and I asked him to describe Low, Low Woods, and he said it's the perfect mix of david's, 50% david cronenberg and 50% david lynch. Would you agree, or maybe you'd have other directors in mind?
• Do you have any personal heroes in the creative arts?
• Favorite moment or issue in the series so far?

Off Topic Top Shelf: Carmen and Dani give us their picks!

Carmen Maria Machado is the author of In the Dream House and Her Body and Other Parties, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and winner of the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. She lives in Philadelphia with her wife.

Jillian Bessett: The voice in the intro and outro belong to songwriter Jillian Bessett. Jillian Bessett is a singer, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist whose evocative lyrics and welcoming stage presence have endeared her to audiences throughout the southwest music scene. Jillian is currently writing music and gigging with her new favorite instrument the Boss RC-505 Looping Station.

Mentioned in the Episode:

Machado's essay in Guernica: "The Trash Heap Has Spoken"

Keven Brockmeier's The Human Soul As A Rube Goldberg Device

Toni Morrison: "“If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.”

Machado's essay on Medium ; "Gaslight Nation"

Gaslight, 1944 film featuring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer

Machado's story "Especially Heinous: 272 Views of Law & Order SVU"

"Voices Carry" song and video by 'Til Tuesday

The Grand Guignol

Writers:

Yōko Ogawa

Toni Morrison (The Pieces I Am, phenomenal documentary on her life now on Netflix)

Karen Russell

Kelly Link

Shirley Jackson

Patricia Highsmith

Angela Carter